Risk and Management

In the opening chapter it was argued that the perspective this book takes on crowds is from the complexity theory. A crowd is complex as each individual is a free agent and, in a crowd, responds to the people near them. Instantaneously, their attitudes and behaviours affect that individual. Hence it is the relationships between the people that create crowd behaviour. This is beyond complicated, because the causes and effects are immersed in multiple behaviours and attitudes that are moving and developing. Managing risks in this environment requires models and processes that push traditional management processes to the boundary. Before moving onto the methodologies for managing risk it is worth noting some of the drivers. The 21st Century multi-polar, hyper-connected, social media driven, fast paced world in which we live presents an environment in which we need to understand and master complexities and uncertainties on a scale never before encountered by the average person.

Crowd Planning and Preparation

This chapter reviews planning methods and practices. Significant work has been published and used for long periods on planning methods. Preplanning is essential due to the life safety factors that a crowd can develop in situ. Planning can be considered in two phases. Information and background planning essential to communicate facts and identify risk areas in crowd management and operational planning. This then provides resourcing and contingency planning once the operation is in place. Like military operations both phases are important, however in many crowd situations operational and contingency planning is given less scrutiny. This is because the plans are normally scrutinised by authorities, councils, government, venue or land owners and they are more comfortable with pre-information type plans that inform them of the context background and communication flows. How the crowds are managed by security contractors is not usually an area they are experienced in, hence less attention is paid to these areas. The aim of this chapter is to provide enough knowledge for all event stakeholders to review and discuss practical implementation issues in security deployment and control. Planning and preparation requires an increased focus for crowd management because the emerging behaviour from the collective requires more options to be considered and prepared for. As crowds can cause life safety issues and because agents and systems can interact to exaggerate interactions and responses quickly, preparation and contingency planning is vital. Crowd risk assessments have to be conducted to understand and communicate the magnitude of the problems that can occur. If the consequences of the crowd activity are significant to the risk appetite of the organiser then response methods and measures should be developed and implemented. An example of this would be preparing additional signage, barriers and guards to divert pedestrians away or around potential bottlenecks when the flow becomes too congested.

Security Hostile Attacks

Attacks on people at events and crowds in general are found around the world. It has completely changed the security at events, and event planning as a whole. From cement bollards to bag checks, it is an irritant to every event attendee. The extra security cost of events has risen so high that many events have been cancelled. The celebratory element of the event has been diminished. However it is not the new phenomena that the media seems to assume. Many countries have lived with political/social inspired attacks for years. If a country has hostile neighbours, terror attacks will occur. Regardless of the statistical evidence and the probability of an attack, people are so worried that the sound of a sharp crack in a crowded place can cause panic and a stampede. This chapter describes some of the attacks on crowds at events, and what the security agencies and governments require from those who manage the crowded spaces. It is well to remember that no matter what is written here or in government recommendations, the attackers are ‘free agents’ and can adapt their actions to the conditions trying to prevent them.

Security Theory Process, definitions, tools and techniques

The widely respected Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs describes our basic requirement for safety and security as just above food, water, warmth, and rest. For the purposes of this chapter, safety is considered in the context of event security. In this context safety is an emotion that is affected by the trust a patron places on the signals, signs and feelings they detect when they review a place, an event, buy a ticket to an event, or attend an event. In essence, the relationship between a patron and a security provider is one of trust. Patrons attending events have an emotional investment in an event, based on both their expectation of the event itself and on their awareness of the risks of attending an event, formed via knowledge of security incidents at other venues around the world. The security profession, on the other hand, invests in the event process through planning, implementation, and application that needs to be robust and stable to fulfil patrons’ trust and maximise their return on investment, and to prevent failure or any other incident that may significantly damage the event. This chapter will explore what security does to make people feel safe and to prevent the loss of assets. It will use a systems theory approach to discuss the interrelation and interaction of the various dynamic aspects of the different parts of the security process.

The Management Framework

The management framework is introduced. This comprises the common high level processes found in the four areas or domains on crowd management. The terminology and concepts described are: state, complexity, emergence, input/process/output, factor analysis and phase change. Using this framework assists the reader to understand the four domains described in the four sections and integrate the knowledge, theory, terminology and examples into a management system.

Crowd Behaviour Theory

Crowds and crowd behaviour are consistently studied in an attempt to make sense of the phenomena that affect human safety. However, crowd deaths and incidents continue to occur frequently, suggesting modern theories around crowd behaviour are not being appropriately understood and applied to crowd management and crowd control. You don’t have to have the academic acumen of Alexander E. Berlonghi, the pioneer in event risk management, to agree that without an understanding of crowd behaviour, crowd management and control activities are random, and ineffectual. This chapter will provide an overview of crowd behaviour theories as a starting point for understanding how they can be utilised to assist in effective crowd control and crowd management. It is helpful to imagine that crowd theories and crowd models are as diverse as crowds themselves and that as crowds change, evolve and develop, the theories and models must either change with them or the definitions move to a different phase. This text proposes future pathways for crowd management.

Integrating Health

Health is inherently complex and negotiating its challenges is the epitome of complexity management. To the uninitiated, developing an event health plan becomes a crash course in balancing previously unappreciated risk with an ever growing list of needs and cost. All too often this is complicated by the need to negotiate a seemingly endless number of opinions, organizations and personalities, often while learning a new (medical) language. Managing health in the dynamic and often unpredictable context of crowds is a specialist skill that requires strategic planning and experienced staff, working within effective systems and with appropriate resources. Expenses are real while funds and resources are limited. Health planning is integral to event management, takes time and needs to commence early. Bringing all parties to the shared realization that everyone fundamentally wants a safe and successful event is an important early milestone. Event and health managers need to understand complexity management from the other’s perspective in order to successfully plan and manage events and crowds. An attempt at translation is provided on the following pages.

Crowd Risks and Advanced Tools

The objectives of organisations engaged with crowd situations are subject to serious threats that can disrupt and compromise their integrity and prevent desired outcomes. By employing a risk management process, organisations can identify and assess threats, vulnerabilities and weaknesses and also the likelihood and consequences to the security environment. Risk management involves identifying and assessing threats to the operating environment or strategic goals and prioritizing resources to minimise, monitor and control the impact of events (incidents).

Crowded Health

Crowds carry real health risks. By definition, crowds bring large numbers of people in to close proximity and confined spaces. The risk of injury is real, due to accident, crush or malice and the medical risk of disease transmission and demographic-specific presentations must also be considered. Selecting health service providers is a key early decision. Consulting with local ambulance and health services to build relationships and to seek advice on local providers, legislative requirements and existing health system capacity is time well spent. It is critical that the provider(s) chosen have the skills, resources and experience to service the event and predictable escalation. Pre-hospital health service provision is a niche industry and is variably regulated. The accumulation of clinical, command and logistical experience takes many years and is a truly heuristic process. A tiered service delivery model, discussed further below, should be adopted with centralized call-taking and management of resources. Finalizing the size, scope and cost of this model can be a time-consuming and stressful process. This will be informed by the health risk assessment, with mitigation strategies according to ALARP principles, although high consequence outcomes (long tail risks) like cardiac arrest and major trauma will require additional resources.

Decision Making on the Day

Chapter 2 concerns issues on the day of the event and within the crowd. In a complex situation effective decisions must be made before small risks become disasters. In this chapter we explore the numerous techniques common to the four sections. These are heuristics, situational awareness, appropriate response, proportionality, local optimization, triggers and resilience. The domains may have different names for these and they will describe them from their perspective in the proceeding chapters.