Analysing human movements at mass events: A novel mobile-based management system based on active beacons and AVM

摘要

The representation, management and analysis of large volumes of people are growing the interest of both academic and public authority researches. This attention was triggered by the increasing availability of data collection tools about spatio-temporal phenomena. Location-based technologies coupled with mobile devices are becoming more affordable, capillary and pervasive. In this context, we propose our work aimed to analyse complex dynamics of visitors' moving at mass events. The whole architecture is based on Automatic Vehicle Monitoring (AVM) systems installed on shuttle buses, smart beacons disseminated through the festival stands, a mobile application freely provided to the visitors and a remote dashboard for data collection and analytics. The case study chosen for our test was the 10th Edition of Mogliano Halloween Festival, which counts every year thousands of visitors during one night. As a first step of this research, preliminary tests demonstrate how the proposed methodology could be useful for event's stakeholders and urban planners in general. First, location-based services (such as push notifications) enable innovative models of interaction with stands and recreational areas by adding tremendous value to the visitors' experience and extending the possibility to affect trajectories with way-finding services. Second, the availability of clear statistics, such as counts and flow maps of visitors and the share of returning visitors, allows distinguishing different patterns. Third, the duality between location-based services and context-aware information opens up new possibilities towards new archetypes of outdoor environments, becoming more digitally-integrated and sensible.