Invited talk during the Media Tour Smart IT - Digital Gateway to Europe, organized by COMMIT/ and NEA (Netherlands Enterprise Agency).

1. Measuring Crowd Density
for Safety and Efficiency
Challenge the future 1
Marco Cattani
Embedded Software Group, TU Delft

2. Challenge the future 2
Motivations
Concerts, festivals and sporting events often
attract large crowds.
© Alex Prager
Heineken Music Hall

3. Challenge the future 3
Motivations
Concerts, festivals and sporting events often
attract large crowds.
Kingsday

4. Challenge the future 4
Motivations
Concerts, festivals and sporting events often
attract large crowds.
© Alex Prager
Ajax Stadium

5. Challenge the future 5
Motivations
To improve planning and safety, we provide
real-time visualization of crowd density.

6. Challenge the future 6
Solution
Low cost wristband that periodically senses
and communicates the surrounding density.

7. Challenge the future 7
Solution
Limited capabilities Powerful tool
• Cheap: 10-20 $
• Compact: 38x14 mm
• Energy efficient: x20
• Accuracy: < 10% error
• Speed: sense in < 1’
• Concurrency: 100s nodes

8. Tracing the popularity of stands during a
technology fair in Amsterdam
Challenge the future 8
Demo
• Group of visitors
• 1 device per person, 18 persons
• A selected subset of stands
• 1 device per stand, measuring the surrounding density
• Visualizer
• Visitors: blue dots, mobile
• Stands: red/orange dots, static
• Mobility estimated from connectivity

9. Challenge the future 9
Running experiment
Tracing the popularity of paintings at Cobra
Museum in Amsterdam

10. Trace crowd density using a low cost wristband
Challenge the future 10
Conclusions
• Improve safety and efficiency of crowds
• Help crowd managers
• Improve attendees awareness
• Not only for crowd monitoring
• Popularity of painting
• Usage of building’s facilities
• More information: www.cattanimarco.com à projects