Crowd safety is a major concern in facilities management and to those who attend events in large buildings and at venues such as sport stadiums, concert halls, and religious events (i.e. Hajj). Crowd safety can be achieved when there are no injurious or serious incidents outcomes experienced by any individual in the crowd. In large buildings used by large numbers of people, there are many threats and different levels of risk that require effective management. A flaw or hazard in large buildings or spaces during an event has resulted in many crowd disasters across the world. Two key existing crowd safety models were identified; FIST [5], and six dimensions and loci of crowd disaster [4]. These models include important factors that may cause risk to crowd safety and lead to crowd disaster. The acronym FIST is defined as: Force (F), Information (I), Space (S) and Time (T) while the six dimensions and loci of crowd disaster model involve 6 factors (Stampede, Riot, Structural and Mechanical failure, Terrorist attacks, Explosion (fire, chemical) and Natural disaster). Two more factors have been added from analyses of previous studies and major crowd incidents including user behavior and perceived safety. The research in this paper used the Holy Mosque during Hajj event as a case study in order to test, verify and to measure the reliability of the factors. The Holy Mosque is the largest mosque in the world, at approximately 356,800 square meters and has 32 doors. It can accommodate around 1.2 million worshipers at the same time. Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam which is mainly concentrated in four holy places: The Holy Mosque, the Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafat. It takes place once a year in a period ranging between 4 and 6 days. The Holy Mosque is a large building and has unique characteristics that facilitate an in-depth understanding of risk factors that may affect crowd safety.
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