So here’s a couple of preprints that appeared recently, with some experiments on crowd dynamics. The new twist here is that they focus on the response of participants to forces from neighbours, rather than wider aspects of crowd dynamics. These intruiged me because they brought to mind several crowd related anecdotes — e.g. I was on Waterloo Bridge at the turn of the millenium, as indeed were quite a large number of other people. In fact the crowd was quite densely packed as far as the eye could see, and it occurred to me at the time that the situation was bordering on one panicked response from disaster — there was really nowhere to go to, and no room to get there anyway — although those near the railing could have jumped into the Thames, I suppose. But of course, being the turn of the millenium, the crowd was good natured and happy to just shuffle around and be part of the event.
Otherwise I recall a Placebo gig that Bruce and I were at back in the day, at the Octagon … no, wait, the Foundry, at University of Sheffield: here we go, in the words of Bruce himself:
Packed with students, who scarily seemed to know all the words to the Placebo songs, and sang them lustily along with the band. I like Placebo, but I dont know all the words, and have no particular desire to learn them all. A good concert.
A thing not mentioned there was that the entire front section of the not so small and disconcertingly enthusiastic crowd was bouncing up and down whilst sloshing left and right over distances of more than a few meters. Not for the faint of heart.
Anyway, so here is the science bit. Trying to shove your way to the front row at a packed out venue? Stop it immediately — there is no need to shove, especially since it will likely only annoy. Just pretend that your friend is over there and you are trying to get back to them. And then you can read this — perhaps while waiting for the next band in the lineup to appear — and so take your time to admire the cohort of guinea pigs in Fig.2 …
Forward propagation of a push through a row of people
Feldmann & Adrian
Security plays a crucial role when it comes to planning large events such as concerts, sporting tournaments, pilgrims, or demonstrations. Monitoring and controlling pedestrian dynamics can prevent dangerous situations from occurring. However, little is known about the specific factors that contribute to harmful situations. For example, the individual response of a person to external forces in dense crowds is not well studied. In order to address this gap in knowledge, we conducted a series of experiments …
Next, a related investigation, but with a larger number of experimentees…
Propagation of controlled frontward impulses through standing crowds
Feldmann, Adrian, & Boltes
Impulse propagation in crowds is a phenomenon that is crucial for understanding collective dynamics, but has been scarcely addressed so far. Therefore, we have carried out experiments in which persons standing in a crowd are pushed forward in a controlled manner. Variations of experimental parameters include …
Bruce tells me he went to see VNV Nation recently, and whilst there was very little in the way of crowd dynamics of the kinematic sort, beyond the usual sort of on-the-spot dancing and swaying, there was a fair bit of social/emotional (or whatever the descriptor might be) interaction between singer and crowd. I’m not sure how you might experimentalise that.