NZZ Format - Mass panic - How streams of people can be controlled

Link to "NZZ-Format - Massenpanik - Wie Menschenströme kontrollierbar werden" on SRF (in german)

Every year there are hundreds of fatalities at sporting events, religious occasions and festivals. Is “mass panic” responsible for this or do people die for other reasons?

We have known how dangerous such major events can be since the Love Parade in Duisburg in 2010, when 21 people died and over 600 were injured. In Seoul last year, more than 150 people died within minutes in the nightlife district. Can this be prevented? Scientists and practitioners are looking for solutions. For example, at the Züri-Fäscht, Switzerland's largest public festival. Here, new approaches are being taken with “crowd management” to prevent dangerous crowds of two million people. Researchers already know a great deal about how mass panic occurs. The reason is almost never panic - but a lack of planning in advance. The vast majority of people act rationally in crowds. Scientists want to predict the behavior of crowds in real time. Video cameras recognize dangerous movement patterns. The aim: to gain time to be able to intervene. To do this, they let test subjects into the crowd at Europe's biggest metal festival for the first time. An “NZZ Format” about crowds and dangerous dynamics.

A film by Luca Froelicher