The article discusses a research study on crowd dynamics conducted by physicist Denis Bartolo relating to the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain. Each July, over 5,000 participants flood the central plaza, creating extreme crowd density that can lead to discomfort and potentially dangerous situations. Dr. Bartolo's team utilized video footage to analyze crowd behavior and theorize that predicting crowd motion becomes feasible past a certain density threshold. The study aims to improve safety and prevent stampedes in large gatherings by understanding these dynamics better.
The density of people is so high that it's not just that you're feeling uncomfortable. It becomes painful, like you can feel pressure on your chest.
Dr. Bartolo and his colleagues say it may be possible to predict the spontaneous motion of a large crowd in a confined space once the density of people crosses a critical threshold.
Studying large, densely packed crowds is notoriously difficult. You cannot just invite a thousand people to participate in an experiment.
The dynamics seem to be erratic, chaotic, turbulent, but I wondered whether I could tease out an organizing principle that governed the movements of the crowd.
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