AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF CROWD DYNAMICS AND MANAGING SAFETY AT EVENTS

Abstract

The UK live events market has long been considered to be a growth sector. Given the range of challenges linked to event crowd safety felt by the industry in recent years, and despite recent setbacks associated with new safety measures and public uncertainty following the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, event organisers remain optimistic about the future. Many authors have studied crowd dynamics and safety planning in recent years, but often the emphasis has been one of objective observation and expert opinion. The outcomes of this thesis are timely as it aimed to investigate attitudinal differences among event audiences relating to safety, and the nature of crowd incidents, alongside observed and perceived efficacy of crowd management strategies, with the ultimate intention to better understand the audiences that attend events and provide recommendations for tailored crowd management strategies and successful, safe event delivery for the long term.

A two-phase methodology was employed using mixed methods and underpinned by a pragmatic philosophical approach. Phase one involved the development of a global crowd incident database with data collated on a range of key factors for analysis that addressed the interrelated complexities of delivering safe and successful events. Phase two then explored audience perceptions related to the efficacy of crowd management strategies and perceived event safety, from 512 UK event attendees in total, across a wide range of events. Practically, the data generated from this joined up approach provide a robust overview of crowd dynamics and its relationship to strategic event safety management to aid in the activity of profiling crowds in attendance at events, alongside the likely dynamic intervening variables of influence that must be determined in order to develop targeted and effective crowd management strategies.

The new knowledge developed from the thesis research outcomes represents an original interdisciplinary contribution to the existing body of literature concerned with crowd dynamics and managing event safety, and also provides a practical contribution to the field of crowd safety management in several ways. First, the matrix of crowd dynamics and effective safety strategies provides detailed insights in relation to likely crowd profiles attending different events as well as unique recommendations for their safe and effective management. Second, a new theoretical representation of crowd dynamics and strategic event safety management was developed that reviews the strategic crowd management process in its entirety to provide an overview of the process, its influences and potential strategic fail points that can impact on an event’s safety outcome and its ultimate success or failure. Its application could arguably aid practitioner understanding, to instil a strategic ‘overview’ of the fundamental elements involved in the crowd safety strategic process when safety is not their primary role. This enhanced understanding would arguably be beneficial to the event safety management process as a whole.