Spatial Strategies for Crowd Management in Haridwar, India

Crowd-related hazards are prevalent in densely populated countries like India where there is increase in the number of visitors to religious gatherings (NDMA, 2014) and the major task of authorities lies in reducing the risk of crowd disasters. The purpose of this work is to spatially analyze the crowd management and emergency preparedness strategies formulated by authorizes for the safe conduction of the Ardh Kumbh Mela, 2016 in Haridwar with the help of tools and technologies. In this paper, we examine the potential of using technologies like Remote Sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS) for evaluating and recommending guidelines for crowd management and emergency response. The study was largely dependent on field visits during the 2016 Ardh Kumbh Mela and it attempted to capture the merits and demerits of the proposed crowd management strategies such as the major crowd flow routes, infrastructure facilities, critical crowd management and emergency routes to hospitals. Various analyses like crowd capacity analysis, infrastructure scoring, and crowd flow analysis helped to recommend guidelines for Crowd Control Management.