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Saudi officials most probably manipulated crowd flow to trigger deadly stampede
The death toll in the deadly Hajj stampede in Mina, Saudi Arabia, has climbed to 769, Saudi Health Minister Khalid al-Falid said earlier today.
“The latest statistics … reveal 769 dead. That is an increase of 52 on the previous figures,” he told reporters. “Those are the ones who died in various hospitals since the event.”
At least 934 others were injured, according to the Saudi media.
The grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, its most senior cleric, has said the stampede on Thursday was beyond human control.
That’s of course hogwash, as any self-respecting crowd-movement analyst would confirm. Crowd dynamics is a mature science. In the same way that crowd behaviors can be modeled and their movements controlled to ensure public safety, the rate of flow and other mob behaviors could easily be manipulated to intentionally trigger a deadly stampede, like the latest carnage in Mina.
Crowd modelling has grown into a highly effective analytical tool. Models predict with high degrees of accuracy what happens in a given space when the rate of crowd flow is altered, or if the swarms are faced with sudden surges, obstacles and bottlenecks in the flow direction.
The carnage that occurred in Saudi Arabia on Thursday was most certainly NOT “beyond human control,” as the mufti suggests; instead, it was most probably caused intentionally by those who were controlling the crowd movements.
Crowd Modelling & Analysis has posted the following information on their website:
To fully understand and care for the well being of crowds, it’s not enough to study the history books or second guess human nature. You have to be able to model, simulate and predict crowd movement, with all the pressures, risks, delays actions and reactions that large groups of people can generate.
[http://www.crowddynamics.com/crowd-modelling-simulation.php]
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