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Hajj Pilgrimage Safety Challenges Crowd Simulator Technology
agent elevator writes: In 2010, Saudi Arabia hosted an international design competition aimed at safely accommodating more pilgrims at Mecca's Grand Mosque. One of the participants told IEEE Spectrum that the crowd densities there (6 people per square meter) bogged down off-the-shelf software so badly that simulation run times were about 10 to 20 times slower than real time crowd movement. Nevertheless, he found some workarounds that gave designers a plan to double the Grand Mosque's peak visitor rate from 40,000 to 102,000 people per hour. Last week's stampede took place well away from the mosque, but signals sent to pilgrims telling them when to speed up or slow down could help prevent such a tragedy, the crowd simulation expert said.
Other engineers are turning to fuzzy logic as way to predict how crowds will react in a panic.
No need, we can just look to the history of Christian Church.
He also banged 9 year olds. 9 year olds dude.
Monstar L
If they have no problem trampling on people, why would they have a problem with ignoring a computer telling them to speed up or slow down?
The first part of that statement shows ignorance of big crowds. If you have ever been in a large crowd you know that when the crowd starts moving, you have no choice, you go with it. If there is something, or someone, on the ground you walk over it because you have absolutely no choice in the matter. I've been in dangerous crowd situations twice in my life, once at a rock concert and once at a post soccer game party. It's very scary and I have no problem at all understanding how people get trampled or crushed. It has nothing to with people not caring about their fellow man. I have to agree with the second part, I doubt any instructions would help once it gets past the tipping point.
McVeigh's motivation was political, not religious. And somehow it's easy to look at his cause and say: well, he did have a point!
He said it was revenge for Waco and Ruby Ridge. Stop editing things.
Right. He didn't like the political leanings and policies of the people who were involved in the deaths in those places. His revenge was against what he perceived as oppressors, not religious antagonists.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This actually deserves to be modded up - b'cos Muslims have this concept of 'inshallah' - as allah wills - whereby anything bad that happens to them is said to be the will of allah, and is not to be questioned. In fact, I think somewhere in the 90s, after such a stampede, a Saudi minister/royal family member made that very comment - that the deaths were the will of allah. So AC's post, while seemingly tasteless, is hardly inappropriate here.