Crowd Disasters Akin to Unstable Fluid Flow

[Karlis]

Understanding crowd dynamics can prevent disaster at cultural or sports events.

Contrary to previous thinking, crowd disasters are not always due to crowds becoming uncontrollable because individuals panic. Instead, the authors conclude that amplifying feedback and cascading effects lead to instability in the crowd. This results in a failure of crowd management and control attempts.

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[+and-then]

Very interesting idea. The crowd as an individual entity concept has been around awhile but this research seems to bring crowd interactions down to an even more quantifiable level. Hopefully it will lead to the physical layout of public venues being arranged in a safer way that can interfere with the cascading effects they mention.

[Clarakore]

The Romans were masterful at crowd management. Bringing a whole group together requires segregating it into different areas even if from a distance the crowd would still appear as one large mass. Separate entrances/exits are paramount. Their Colosseum could be emptied in 10 minutes through 80 separate entrances. Thinking of ways to segregate modern crowds congregated on open ground without the benefit of a massive building would be a challenge.

[devilmaycare]

Obviously dear watson. Mind over matter and all that.