MMaPFlow: A Crowd-sourcing based Approach for Mapping Mass Pedestrian Flow

Abstract

Mass gatherings and mass pedestrian flows such as during holy rituals are always challenging for the management as well as for the people attending them. The holy city of Makkah hosts millions of pilgrim coming from all over the world each year during Ramadan and Hajj seasons. One of the main rituals is the tawaaf (circumambulation) of the Holy Kaaba. Knowing the average tawaaf time and flow rates of pilgrims around Holy Kaaba is beneficial in order to efficiently schedule the visit to the Sacred Mosque and avoid crowdedness. This paper discusses MMaPFlow approach for Mapping Mass Pedestrian Flow around Holy Kaaba using crowd-sourcing. The crowd-sourcing is done through pilgrim smartphone to calculate average tawaaf time and other statistics related to pilgrims movement around the Holy Kaaba.