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Crowd Disasters as Systemic Failures: Analysis of the Love Parade Disaster

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  • Dirk Helbing
  • Pratik Mukerji

Abstract

Each year, crowd disasters happen in different areas of the world. How and why do such disasters happen? Are the fatalities caused by relentless behavior of people or a psychological state of panic that makes the crowd 'go mad'? Or are they a tragic consequence of a breakdown of coordination? These and other questions are addressed, based on a qualitative analysis of publicly available videos and materials, which document the planning and organization of the Love Parade in Duisburg, Germany, and the crowd disaster on July 24, 2010. Our analysis reveals a number of misunderstandings that have widely spread. We also provide a new perspective on concepts such as 'intentional pushing', 'mass panic', 'stampede', and 'crowd crushs'. The focus of our analysis is on the contributing causal factors and their mutual interdependencies, not on legal issues or the judgment of personal or institutional responsibilities. Video recordings show that, in Duisburg, people stumbled and piled up due to a 'domino effect', resulting from a phenomenon called 'crowd turbulence' or 'crowd quake'. Crowd quakes are a typical reason for crowd disasters, to be distinguished from crowd disasters resulting from 'panic stampedes' or 'crowd crushes'. In Duisburg, crowd turbulence was the consequence of amplifying feedback and cascading effects, which are typical for systemic instabilities. Accordingly, things can go terribly wrong in spite of no bad intentions from anyone. Comparing the incident in Duisburg with others, we give recommendations to help prevent future crowd disasters. In particular, we introduce a new scale to assess the criticality of conditions in the crowd. This may allow preventative measures to be taken earlier on. Furthermore, we discuss the merits and limitations of citizen science for public investigation, considering that today, almost every event is recorded and reflected in the World Wide Web.

Suggested Citation

  • Dirk Helbing & Pratik Mukerji, "undated". "Crowd Disasters as Systemic Failures: Analysis of the Love Parade Disaster," Working Papers ETH-RC-12-010, ETH Zurich, Chair of Systems Design.
    • Handle: RePEc:stz:wpaper:eth-rc-12-010
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    2. Grothe-Hammer, Michael, 2019. "Organization without actorhood: Exploring a neglected phenomenon," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 325-338.
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    4. Huang, Lida & Chen, Tao & Wang, Yan & Yuan, Hongyong, 2015. "Congestion detection of pedestrians using the velocity entropy: A case study of Love Parade 2010 disaster," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 440(C), pages 200-209.
    5. Yury Kryvasheyeu & Haohui Chen & Esteban Moro & Pascal Van Hentenryck & Manuel Cebrian, 2015. "Performance of Social Network Sensors during Hurricane Sandy," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(2), pages 1-19, February.
    6. Haghani, Milad, 2021. "The knowledge domain of crowd dynamics: Anatomy of the field, pioneering studies, temporal trends, influential entities and outside-domain impact," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 580(C).
    7. Cheng, Yuan & Zheng, Xiaoping, 2018. "Emergence of cooperation during an emergency evacuation," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 320(C), pages 485-494.
    8. Liang, Haoyang & Du, Jie & Wong, S.C., 2021. "A Continuum model for pedestrian flow with explicit consideration of crowd force and panic effects," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 100-117.
    9. Nicolas, Alexandre & Bouzat, Sebastián & Kuperman, Marcelo N., 2017. "Pedestrian flows through a narrow doorway: Effect of individual behaviours on the global flow and microscopic dynamics," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 30-43.
    10. Li, Wenhang & Gong, Jianhua & Yu, Ping & Shen, Shen & Li, Rong & Duan, Qishen, 2014. "Simulation and analysis of individual trampling risk during escalator transfers," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 408(C), pages 119-133.
    11. Shahhoseini, Zahra & Sarvi, Majid, 2019. "Pedestrian crowd flows in shared spaces: Investigating the impact of geometry based on micro and macro scale measures," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 57-87.
    12. Milad Haghani & Majid Sarvi & Zahra Shahhoseini & Maik Boltes, 2016. "How Simple Hypothetical-Choice Experiments Can Be Utilized to Learn Humans’ Navigational Escape Decisions in Emergencies," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-24, November.
    13. Zhang, N. & Huang, H. & Su, Boni, 2016. "Comprehensive analysis of information dissemination in disasters," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 462(C), pages 846-857.
    14. Zhang, X.L. & Weng, W.G. & Yuan, H.Y. & Chen, J.G., 2013. "Empirical study of a unidirectional dense crowd during a real mass event," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(12), pages 2781-2791.
    15. Li, Wenhang & Gong, Jianhua & Yu, Ping & Shen, Shen, 2016. "Modeling, simulation and analysis of group trampling risks during escalator transfers," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 444(C), pages 970-984.
    16. Huang, Zhiren & Wang, Pu & Zhang, Fan & Gao, Jianxi & Schich, Maximilian, 2018. "A mobility network approach to identify and anticipate large crowd gatherings," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 147-170.
    17. Lin, Peng & Ma, Jian & Liu, Tianyang & Ran, Tong & Si, Youliang & Li, Tao, 2016. "An experimental study of the “faster-is-slower” effect using mice under panic," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 452(C), pages 157-166.
    18. Wang, Jia & Ni, Shunjiang & Shen, Shifei & Li, Shuying, 2019. "Empirical study of crowd dynamic in public gathering places during a terrorist attack event," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 523(C), pages 1-9.
    19. Cheng, John W. & Mitomo, Hitoshi, 2015. "The role of ICT in collective resilience in a time of crisis," 2015 Regional ITS Conference, Los Angeles 2015 146324, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    20. Zeng, Yiping & Ye, Rui & Song, Weiguo & Luo, Shengfeng & Meng, Fanyu & Vizzari, Giuseppe, 2021. "Entropy analysis of the laminar movement in bidirectional pedestrian flow," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 566(C).
    21. Cheng, John W. & Mitomo, Hitoshi, 2016. "Effects of ICT and media information on collective resilience after disasters – from a virtual crowd to a psychological crowd – Part 1 - ICT and media information and collective resilience in an emerg," 27th European Regional ITS Conference, Cambridge (UK) 2016 148663, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    22. Shi, Xiaomeng & Ye, Zhirui & Shiwakoti, Nirajan & Tang, Dounan & Lin, Junkai, 2019. "Examining effect of architectural adjustment on pedestrian crowd flow at bottleneck," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 522(C), pages 350-364.

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