Overview:

Introduction:

People gather in many places, including conferences and exhibitions, festivals, shopping areas, concerts, sporting events, transportation hubs, and many more. When people gather in groups, it instantly raises the risks of injuries, crime, anti-social behavior, terrorism, and other incidents which could occur through panic, distress, or concern. Many varied and complex incidents exist when crowds panic, such as crushing, stampeding, surging, swaying, clogging, etc. and knowing how to recognize, deal with and manage these incidents is of paramount importance when implementing crowd safety strategies.

Any individual engaging in the planning of crowd safety in public assembly needs to understand the make-up of crowds and how best to respond to a variety of situations. This 5-day course is ideal for any professional within security, safety, customer service, policing, or management role who is organizing or working at events where large groups of people will gather.

This course enables participants to recognize the dynamics of a crowd, to understand the behavior of people alone versus in groups, and to allow those involved with crowd management to control the situation professionally while mitigating the risk to people through crowd safety

Course Objectives:

At the end of this course the participants will be able to:

• Understand the principles of planning and preparing for events, including crowd management and control
• Explain, understand and apply safety policies, procedures, and legal requirements for events
• Utilize Risk, Threat, and Vulnerability assessments
• Identify the different types of physical security equipment needed for crowd management
• Understand the psychology of crowd science

Targeted Audience:

• This course is ideal for professionals within security, safety, customer service, policing, or management role; and for anyone engaged in event planning or responsible for crowd safety who may need to understand the make-up of crowds and how best to deal with any situation which may occur due to crowded environments or public assemblies

Course Outlines:

Unit 1: Introduction to Crowd Management and Control:

• Roles and responsibilities of event staff
• Types of events and gatherings
• Planning and preparing for dealing with events
• Physical Security Measures
• Access and Egress control
• Legal requirements
• Venue safety policy and procedure
• Venue control rooms
• Health and safety procedure (safety signage, etc.)
• Response, safety, venue and event teams
• Search procedures
• Specific and generic threats to people and property

Unit 2: Crowd Dynamics and Behavior:

• Types of behavior
• The 3 D’s principle for crowd safety
• Small, medium and large pedestrian areas
• Gas Kinetic model of pedestrian flows
• Magnetic force model
• Pooling model
• Shockwave theory
• Principles of Queue management
• Intersecting flows
• Bottlenecks and obstructions
• Lane switching
• Emergency lane formation
• Social force model
• Attractive interactions (Pipe Piper of Hamlin syndrome)

Unit 3: Crowd Risk Analysis:

• Crowd modeling
• Emergencies and the effects on the crowd
• Last-mile theory
• Phases of an event (Ingress and Egress)
• Circulation theory
• Boundaries and managing space
• Crowd dispersal
• Crowd movement throw flow rate
• High-density levels
• Weather and environmental effects on the crowd
• Risk Assessment process
• Risk Mitigation
• Risk Analysis
• Media management (social media)
• Communication skills for crowd management
• Crowd management plan exercise

Unit 4: Spectator and Event Safety Planning:

• Responding to emergencies and injuries
• Emergency procedures
• Emergency planning
• Responding to terrorism
• Safety planning
• Security action plan
• Evacuation procedure
• Controlling density and capacity issues
• Customer service and safety
• Conflict resolution
• Dealing with disability, equality and diversity

Unit 5: Crowd Planning Exercise:

• Security Action Plan
• Emergency Plan
• Crowd Safety Plan
• Protect and Prepare
• Identify and Disrupt
• Control and Secure
• Engage and Communicate
• Incident Management