Team
Stefan Seer project leader

Overcrowding is a major concern in public transport and at major events, as it reduces safety, comfort and transport efficiency. One effective measure against overcrowding is to temporarily restrict access to certain areas. For this purpose, operations managers typically rely on visual inspections of large crowds by a human supervisor, rather than on quantitative data. Subjective decisions of a human observer, however, frequently fail to bring optimal and timely access restrictions.

CONTROL is an innovative computer-aided crowd control system for optimizing crowd flows in public transport infrastructures or at major events. It automatically controls access restriction settings to limit the number of people in certain areas to a predefined level. CONTROL uses automated people-counting sensors to measure quantitative pedestrian flow data, thus replacing subjective and often inaccurate human assessments of overcrowding.