The Kumbh Mela Experiment (KME): Measuring and understanding the dynamics of mankind's largest crowd - Experiences from Kumbh Mela 2016 in Ujjain

Abstract

The Kumbh Mela Experiment (KME) is an ongoing Indo-Dutch collaborative research project funded jointly by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Govt. of India, and Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), Netherlands. The Transportation Engineering (TE) Lab at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore is the lead partner of this project. The aim of the project is to use big data and Internet of Things (IOT) for understanding crowd dynamics in mass gatherings and develop a crowd management solution particularly focusing on crowd risk. As the name clearly suggests, the data collection was done during the recently held Kumbh Mela (Simhasth-2016) in Ujjain, M.P., India during 22nd April to 21st May 2016. An “Indo-Dutch Collaborative Research Camp” was set up in the Kumbh Mela area for the months of April and May 2016 to carry out data collection and experimentation activities during Simhasth-2016 for the KME project. The primary data sources/devices used were: about 540 wearable tracking devices, 3000 wearable lanyard devices, Go Pro cameras, drones, questionnaire survey etc. The secondary data sources include: police CCTV camera data and drone data, Mahakal Temple CCTV data, etc. This presentation on KME will explain the scientific aspects of the project and the experiences of data collection.