Crowd Disasters

(updated  31st August 2007)

Keywords: simulating people, simulating crowds, simulating crowd dynamics

Stampedes

There is a disturbing pattern arising in the use of marketing gimmicks - specifically crowd crazing in which a company "hypes" a product. This often results in serious injury and death. One of the main concerns we have as an organisation is the lack of understanding of behavioural based safety (how people react during emergency situations) and the lack of basic understanding of the severe nature of crowd pressures. Crowds pressures can build up in seconds and crush the life out of dozens as the following examples illustrate.

Wed, 25 October Cities 'unprepared for disaster'

None of the UK's major cities is fully ready to deal with a major disaster or a terrorist attack on the scale of the 7 July bombings, a survey has claimed. The Reader's Digest looked at emergency planning in 10 cities and concluded that Liverpool was the least-prepared. The city was given a "readiness score" of 55% - its ambulance response times and police force being criticised. Birmingham was found to be the most ready (79%), with London on 70% and Leeds, Manchester and Bradford on 61%. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Sheffield and Cardiff each received a readiness score of 58%. Inadequate information Katherine Walker, of Readers Digest, said things had improved since the 7 July London bombings, but several cities would struggle to cope in the aftermath of a disaster. "Not one of the 10 provides adequate information on evacuation for the elderly and disabled, who are uniquely vulnerable in any crisis," she said. The survey used 11 indicators to assess how prepared the cities were to deal with a major natural disaster, terrorist attack, industrial accident or pandemic. It found that emergency planning in all the cities fell down in at least one respect. 'Crude and simplistic' Liverpool came in for particular criticism, with the survey saying communications systems used by emergency services in the city were incompatible. As a result, the report's authors claimed police, firefighters and paramedics would struggle to talk to one another in a crisis. And they said Liverpool's emergency evacuation plan was not clearly explained on the city's website. But the Merseyside authorities rejected the survey's findings, labelling them "superficial and inaccurate". In a statement, the Merseyside emergency services said: "Emergency planning is much broader than the crude and over-simplistic measurements contained in this report." The survey "in no way reflects the ability of a multi-agency response to deal with a disaster or large-scale emergency", the statement said. Birmingham scored top marks in five of the 11 indicators. London - identified as the UK's number one terrorist target - scored poorly on police capacity to cope with 999 calls and a shortage of acute hospital beds.

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