Saving Lives through Video Analytics

Last November, a terrible tragedy occurred in Madrid, in a Halloween party celebrated at Madrid Arena, an indoor building located at the fairgrounds in the Casa de Campo. Five girls were crushed to death when a human crowd, out of control, tried to leave the premises. This was partly due  to the fact that the organizers of the party had sold more than double of the tickets they said they had officially sold, and the place was way over its capacity. However, it was not the first time such an unfortunate event had happened.  Similar situations took place in other moments in other countries: in 2010 more than 20 people were killed in a human stampede in the Love Parade in Duisburg, Germany, among others.

So how can Video Analytics help here? Could these and other tragedy have been prevented?

Well, video analytics could offer a great deal of help in this regard. The technology is already available for counting people in crowds. In fact this technology is already being used for commercial purposes in the supermarkets to count the number of customers coming in and out of the store for marketing research purposes as well as operational capabilities. Having this technology for nightclubs can help to enforce the control of the capacity of the enterprise and fulfill the legal capacity requirements often ignored by the business owners.

If more tragic events like the one in Madrid keep on happening, negative publicity will  build up and pressure will be on club owners and local and federal governments to take action. People need to be protected and these risks need to be mitigated. One clear way of implementing the risk management tool is video analytics monitoring system enforcing and aligning ticket scanning at the entrance with the capacity limitation established by the city authorities.

If you're still not convinced about this technology and how it can help, this video provides a good demonstration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7BrVzdOzc4

This link talks about the benefits of using Video Analytics for Crowd Control as opposed to GPS based mechanisms which was more traditionally used:
http://www.securitynewsdesk.com/2013/04/19/police-use-personal-gps-for-crowd-control/

If governments would enforce the use of this technology they could monitor the compliance of companies with regulations and that pavilions and arenas used for events do not surpass their capacity.