Papers by Abdullah Alhawsawi
IEEE Access
Annually, a huge number of pilgrims visit Mecca to perform Al Hajj ritual. Crowd management is cr... more Annually, a huge number of pilgrims visit Mecca to perform Al Hajj ritual. Crowd management is critical in this occasion in order to avoid crowd disasters (e.g., stampede and suffocation). Recent studies stated that various factors, such as the environment, fatigue level, health condition and emotional status have a significant effect on crowded events. This calls for a need for an automated data analytics system that feeds event organizers with information about those factors on real-time, at least from a generalizable sample of crowd subjects, in which proactive crowd management decisions are made to reduce overall risks. This paper develops a novel methodology that fuses mobile GPS and physiological data of Hajj pilgrims collected through wearable sensors to train three classification models: (a) current performed Hajj activity, (b) fatigue level, and (c) emotional level. In a pilot experiment conducted against two subjects, promising results of a minimum of 75% accuracy levels were achieved for the activity recognition and fatigue level classifiers, whereas the emotional level classifier still requires further refinements. INDEX TERMS Hajj, crowd control, crowd management, physiological sensors, deep learning, machine learning.
Collective Dynamics
Modelling and simulating pedestrian motions are standard ways to investigate crowd dynamics aimed... more Modelling and simulating pedestrian motions are standard ways to investigate crowd dynamics aimed to enhance pedestrians’ safety. Movement of people is affected by interactions with one another and with the physical environment that it may be a worthy line of research. This paper studies the impact of speed on how pedestrians respond to the obstacles (i.e. Obstacles avoidance behaviour). A field experiment was performed in which a group of people were instructed to perform some obstacles avoidance tasks at two levels of normal and high speeds. Trajectories of the participants are extracted from the video recordings for the subsequent intentions:(i) to seek out the impact of total speed, x and yaxis (ii) to observe the impact of the speed on the movement direction, x-axis, (iii) to find out the impact of speed on the lateral direction, y-axis. The results of the experiments could be used to enhance the current pedestrian simulation models.
© 2021 Abdullah AlhawsawiThe ability to accurately model and simulate the interactions between pe... more © 2021 Abdullah AlhawsawiThe ability to accurately model and simulate the interactions between pedestrians and the natural environment is a matter of interest in the crowd dynamics field. A primary objective is to optimise the design of entry and exit points and thus provide safe passage in crowded venues such as schools, theatres, mosques, airports, railway stations, concert halls and football stadiums. Therefore, understanding the dynamics of crowd behaviour is important for improving the safety of crowds. People’s movements are affected by interactions with other individuals and the environment. The interactions between humans and physical objects are of particular concern in crowd movement, especially during an emergency, and require further study. Pedestrian simulation has been recognised as a tool that provides a robust framework for understanding crowd dynamics in a complex environment and for predicting crowd density during an extreme event. However, for pedestrian simulatio...
Collective Dynamics, 2022
As a result of the geometric constraints of the stairs, pedestrian movement features on stairways... more As a result of the geometric constraints of the stairs, pedestrian movement features on stairways are different from level ambulation. Therefore, it is necessary for us to consider the stairs' three-dimensional geometry when we try to explore how the stair configuration affects pedestrian movement efficiency. Based on the pedestrian fundamental features from a previous pedestrian single-file movement experiment on stairs, we investigated pedestrian flow under various stair configurations with an improved agent-based model. Our simulated indicates that both stair inclinations and tread depth of stair step are sensitive to the pedestrian dynamic on stairs. Generally speaking, pedestrian flow decreases with the increasing slope of stairs. When the stairs slope increased 5, 10, 15 and 20 degree, the evacuation efficiency dropped 5.8%, 12.8%, 19.3% and 28.4%. Besides, the effect of the tread depth on pedestrian total evacuation time is not changed monotonously. Scenarios with 0.3m tr...
Collective Dynamics, 2021
The aim of this study is to understand the collective movements of individuals and to observe how... more The aim of this study is to understand the collective movements of individuals and to observe how individuals interact within a physical environment in a crowd dynamic, which has drawn the attention of many researchers. We conducted an experimental study to observe interactions in the collective motions of people and to identify characteristics of pedestrians when passing obstacles of different sizes (bar-shaped, 1.2 m, 2.4 m, 3.6 m and 4.8 m), going through one narrow exit and employing three different flow rates in walking and running conditions. According to the results of our study, there were no differences in collision-avoidance behaviour of pedestrians when walking or running. The pedestrians reacted early to the obstacles and changed the direction in which they were walking by quickly turning to the left or to the right. In terms of the speed of the pedestrians, the average velocity was significantly affected while performing these tasks, decreasing as the size of the obstac...
Building Simulation, 2021
Pedestrian flow through narrow exits is one the most important features of crowd dynamics and eva... more Pedestrian flow through narrow exits is one the most important features of crowd dynamics and evacuation. This is a particularly important aspect of pedestrian simulation models in that the accuracy is highly dependent on their ability to produce realistic exit flow rates. We firstly identified the four parameters that are most critical for physical interactions of the social force model and then calibrated them against two well-controlled pedestrian experiments. With these calibrated parameters, we discussed the reasonable settings of sensitive parameters for different levels of pedestrian competitiveness. Then, we revisited the basic questions about the effect of the exit location, the bottleneck length, and the effect of obstacles on pedestrian egress. Our simulation results indicated that: (1) The effect of the exit location on the pedestrian egress efficiency is uncertain, and the evacuation efficiency is also related to the exit width and the level of urgency. (2) The “pass-way” after the exit also named as the bottleneck length has a negative impact on the evacuation performance only in the scenarios that the bottleneck length is not more than 2.0 meters. When the bottleneck length exceeds 2.0 meters, pedestrian outflow efficiency reaches an asymptotic. (3) Setting an obstacle near an exit is not leading to a longer pedestrian evacuation time, instead, it is effectively improving pedestrian evacuation.
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Papers by Abdullah Alhawsawi