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Smart Street Design for Managing Crowds in Hajj

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Abstract and Figures

Hajj is an annual pilgrimage to Makkah in Saudi Arabia where over two and a half million pilgrims attend. It is one of the most intense crowded events in the world. Unfortunately, Hajj has witnessed several stampedes, fires and other disasters, which have led to the death of thousands of people. In recent years, the hajj management has made several improvements in the infrastructure, which has helped ease congestion in crowded rituals. However, despite the great development and huge contributions in improving the infrastructure of the facilities, the problem of crowd control and congestion still remains a real challenge to the management. Although crowd management during hajj is exemplary, it still remains largely manual. This research proposes an innovative solution by designing digital smart streets based on cheap LED-light screens, and control algorithm in addition to distributed fog nodes, wireless network sensors, and servers for the main computing and management. The proposed system will facilitate the process of controlling crowds, and the way it will function with the help of special signals and colors. These signs and instructions can be quickly and easily followed and adopted by people within the crowd. In this way, crowd management would be able to provide a prompt response to the requests and alerts from the central command. We use many techniques to detect the issues of crowds and locate places of interest based on the fog nodes and digital street processing. A prototype of the proposed system has been simulated to demonstrate its feasibility and ease of application to determine the benefits and features that it is capable to achieve, if implemented in crowded areas during the course of the Hajj.
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Proceedings of the 15th INDIACom; INDIACom-2021; IEEE Conference ID: 51348
2021 8th International Conference on “Computing for Sustainable Global Development”, 17th - 19th March, 2021
Bharati Vidyapeeth's Institute of Computer Applications and Management (BVICAM), New Delhi (INDIA)
Smart Street Design for Managing Crowds in Hajj
Adnan Ahmed Abi Sen
Faculty of Computer and
Information Systems
Islamic University
Al-Madinah, Saudi Arabia
adnanmnm@hotmail.com
Yazed Alsaawy
Faculty of Computer and
Information Systems
Islamic University
Al-Madinah, Saudi Arabia
yalsaawy@iu.edu.sa
Ahmad Alkhodre
Faculty of Computer and
Information Systems
Islamic University
Al-Madinah, Saudi Arabia
aalkhodre@iu.edu.sa
Nour Mahmoud Bahbouh
Department of Information and Communication Sciences
Granada University
Granada, Spain
nourmahmoud@mail.ugr.es
Mohamed Alhaboob
College of Computing and Information Technology,
Islamic University
Al-Madinah, Saudi Arabia
alhapoop2011@gmail.com
Abstract Hajj is an annual pilgrimage to Makkah in Saudi
Arabia where over two and a half million pilgrims attend. It is
one of the most intense crowded events in the world.
Unfortunately, Hajj has witnessed several stampedes, fires and
other disasters, which have led to the death of thousands of
people. In recent years, the hajj management has made several
improvements in the infrastructure, which has helped ease
congestion in crowded rituals. However, despite the great
development and huge contributions in improving the
infrastructure of the facilities, the problem of crowd control
and congestion still remains a real challenge to the
management. Although crowd management during hajj is
exemplary, it still remains largely manual. This research
proposes an innovative solution by designing digital smart
streets based on cheap LED-light screens, and control
algorithm in addition to distributed fog nodes, wireless network
sensors, and servers for the main computing and management.
The proposed system will facilitate the process of controlling
crowds, and the way it will function with the help of special
signals and colors. These signs and instructions can be quickly
and easily followed and adopted by people within the crowd. In
this way, crowd management would be able to provide a
prompt response to the requests and alerts from the central
command. We use many techniques to detect the issues of
crowds and locate places of interest based on the fog nodes and
digital street processing. A prototype of the proposed system
has been simulated to demonstrate its feasibility and ease of
application to determine the benefits and features that it is
capable to achieve, if implemented in crowded areas during the
course of the Hajj.
KeywordsSmart street, digital street, crowd management,
Hajj, flow control.
I. INTRODUCTION
Crowd management is one of the big challenges facing
many countries that host events where millions of people
congregate [1], [2]. The process of controlling the flow of
these crowds is a very critical and important issue, especially
when an accident or matter occurs that generates a state of
panic and a stampede between individuals, which may
develop into real disasters unless it is controlled and dealt
with quickly [3].
In the past years, the world has witnessed many disasters
resulting from crowds, which had led to the death of
thousands of people [4]. Hajj is one of the busiest places, as
it annually attracts millions of pilgrims to gather in one place
at the same time [5].
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is working to serve the
pilgrims and manage Hajj in the best possible way by
providing infrastructure, safety, and security factors, in
addition to several other facilities in order to manage these
crowds, but government agencies are still looking for more
tools and ways to deal with abnormal situations [6].
Employing modern technology in crowd management
may be the ideal solution to overcome this challenge and
avoid any potential problems [7]. The Internet of Things has
created a major transformation in the last ten years in the
way we interact and access services and have led to radical
changes in many fields such as health, transportation, and
business [8], [9].
Thus, employing the Internet of Things and its tools and
technologies may significantly improve the ways we deal
with crowd management, such as monitoring, tracking, early
warning, data collection and analysis, and the deduction of a
lot of information about crowds [10].
Digital streets can be considered one of the tools of the
Internet of Things. It has been used in some smart cities to
obtain better services by gathering instant information about
the level of congestion or the degree of pollution, and has
been used in systems that improve safety and energy
efficiency [11], [12].
Moreover, the integration between cloud computing and
fog computing provides more functions and features, and
supports many new applications that are sensitive to delay or
require response in real time like dealing with crisis or
abnormal issues such as stampedes within crowds [13].
This research proposes designing a system based on
digital streets in addition to fog computing in the areas where
pilgrims reside during the Hajj season [13], [14]. The system
will provide a mechanism for rapid response to emergencies
within the crowd, in addition to an effective mechanism that
enables the concerned authorities to control the flow of
crowds under these conditions to prevent disasters and
maintain the safety of pilgrims.
Proceedings of the 15th INDIACom; INDIACom-2021; IEEE Conference ID: 51348
2021 8th International Conference on “Computing for Sustainable Global Development”, 17th - 19th March, 2021
The next section explains some of the previous work in
crowd management in addition to the role of fog computing
in providing new features and its integration with the cloud,
while the following section explains the idea of the proposed
system and its implementation mechanism, down to the
recommendations and conclusion in the final section.
II. LITERATURE REVIEWS
Crowd control has been an interesting issue until now.
Lately, a lot of new techniques and algorithms have been
used to provide smarter methods to achieve this.
In [22], the researchers provide a broad overview of
recent technological developments in the field of crowd
planning and monitoring techniques for an effective crowd
management system. It discusses aspects of crowd modeling
and technological advances in obtaining audience data
during a crowded event execution such as techniques for
data mining coming from IoT tools or social media.
For example, using the Internet of Things tools (such as
RFIDs) to find information about numbers of people and
tracking people in a crowd has recently become a very useful
application for many people. It has greatly assisted in
reducing the instances of losses among crowds, in addition
to providing useful information that helps the decision-
maker to manage the crowd and distribution [15], [16].
Also, the use of network sensors (WSNs) has become
widespread and used in many applications, such as
measuring the movement rate, pollution level, temperature or
pressure, etc. to quickly deal with any abnormal situation
[17].
Monitoring cameras have become ubiquitous, in addition
to smartphones, which have become available to everyone
with millions of supportive smart applications in various
fields such as medical, educational, traffic, and others [18].
More than that, the great development in AI algorithms
contributed greatly to take advantage of the data collected
from all previous tools, such as image-processing algorithms
and the detection of unusual events in crowds. All of this
created a stimulating environment for more ideas,
applications, and tools [19], [20].
In [23], the researchers provided an integrated work
platform INCROWD for crowd management through
sensing, mining, forecasting, and making correct decisions in
managing unusual events and knowing their causes and
interpretation. The platform has provided three basic stages
of decision support:
Event preparation and planning stage: preparing for
any emergency event by developing special
contingency plans through a multidisciplinary team
and by relying on organizers such as police,
ambulances, hosts, and transport operators, and
assigning separate doors and ways to enter and exit.
During the implementation of the event: monitoring
the event, following it up and evaluating it on an
ongoing basis, and implementing what is necessary
according to the plan. The process of communication
between members of the team is important, but the
most important is the way the team communicates
with the crowds. The importance of monitoring is to
detect potential problems early, to make them easier
to deal with. Monitoring is usually done by people,
cameras, drones, or through the use of special gates.
The monitoring is concerned with obtaining private
information such as the number of people in an area,
the distance between them, the rate of flow into the
area and the rate of exit from it, the general mood of
the crowd, and the problems of the stampede.
Historical data can be classified by experts and
observers, or automatically by analyzing images and
videos. Crowd behavior can be classified into
(normal, abnormal, dangerous, or emergency), but it
is difficult for automatic classification to reveal the
emotional and psychological aspects of individuals.
Real-time support after making the right decision.
Some have suggested exploring social media to reveal
the psychological and emotional aspects of individuals in the
crowd. Some have suggested using wearable sensors for
automatic detection as well, but they are expensive
compared to other methods [24].
To save on planning costs, some have suggested relying
on multi-scale simulation models with different accuracy to
achieve better effectiveness close to reality [25].
In [26], [30] and [31], the researchers confirmed that
Makkah Al Mukarramah and Madina Al Munawarah
annually witnesses large crowds estimated in the millions,
thus, employing Computer Visions techniques and
algorithms can play a pivotal role in the image and video
analysis process, thus providing the staff with a lot of useful
information.
All of the above techniques provided only auxiliary
solutions to stage one (Planing) and two (Executing) but, not
for the third one (after an issue occured) which is concerned
with contacting and controlling crowds after an abnormal
occurance. So, the previous works are incomplete to provide
comprehensive and effective management to the flow of
crowds and to deal with anomalies. This is exactly what this
work tries to address by creating a new tool which will be
explained in details in the next section.
III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
The process of quickly detecting events at the moment of
their occurrence, such as a stampede, is one of the most
important elements that help mitigate the damage or the
impact of this event, but on the other hand, detection is not
only sufficient but must be accompanied by a quick response
by the users surrounding the incident to alert or warn.
This process is not easy, especially in light of the
circumstances or chaos resulting from the accident that
affects the behavior of the people around it. The difficulty of
the process increases with the increase in the number of
people, and thus the process will be more complicated in the
case of crowds during the Hajj season.
This research provides a complementary idea to what has
been published in the previous work, which was concerned
with discovering the occurrence of the accident by using
cameras, which were distributed in the places of pilgrims'
Smart Street Design for Managing Crowds in Hajj
presence and the paths they take during the Hajj rituals [10].
Fig. 1 depicts the main architecture of our proposed
framework.
Fig. 1. Proposed framework
The IoT object (such as a camera) will send the images to
the adjacent fog node, which will quickly analyze the image
according to a suggested algorithm, then give an alert if
something abnormal happens. If there is any issue, then the
controller will manage the digital street to control the flow,
and in the same time the notification will be sent to the core-
fog node to manage other areas/cells near the position of the
event and according to the size of the case. This research will
complete the work from the moment an accident is detected,
and when the fog node triggers the alert.
The research suggests designing a special innovative tool
that we called the Digital Street. This tool will convert the
paths and areas of the crowd into a large digital screen made
of millions of LEDs, and it will be divided into cells of equal
size, all of them linked in one matrix, and they are controlled
by several levels.
The first level is a fog node that controls a specific part
of the array, a central fog node that controls multiple fog
nodes, and finally a central server (cloud) that controls the
entire array and can be managed by an administrator.
Thus, when an accident occurs, the floor will be
illuminated in different colors, making it easier for people to
adhere to certain paths, move away from the accident areas
quickly, and facilitate the arrival of special security or
medical teams to the location of the accident.
These colors and the way they are lit in the floor of the
path will be the best way to alert the crowd, as it is difficult
to alert the crowd or control their flow through a group of
people, or through sound due to the interfering noise, and the
lack of clarity of what to do when the alarm is allowed.
Therefore, this method will be very effective in facilitating
managing the flow when an accident occurs, and it can also
be used to distribute the crowds in a balanced manner over
different areas in normal every day cases.
Also, these tools will not have high costs due to the
simplicity of their configuration and their reliance on LEDs
only, which will encourage the relevant authorities to work
on applying them, especially as they can provide an effective
solution to avoid serious accidents that affect people's lives.
A simulated circuit was designed for a small area and it
demonstrated how to control it through colors easily. The
main components that were used in the proposed circuit are
presented in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. Proposed circuit for digital street matrix
A. Main Hardware Components of Proposed Circuit
The main hardware components includes:
Arduino Uno - It is a microcontroller, open source
electronic boards based on easy-to-use hardware and
software [21]. This panel (Fig. 3) is considered the most
widespread and used across the world due to usability and
efficiency, especially as it is compatible with one of the
strongest programming languages (C++).
It is able to read input from any type of sensor (Camera,
Heat, Pressure, Smoke, Noise, Fire, et.) in addition to SMS
and manual access control. Also, it can send an output signal
to turn on or turn off any electronic device. It can be
accessed from anywhere by Internet or Bluetooth or any
Radio Frequency Signal in addition to the option of wired
access.
Fig. 3. Arduino Uno
LED Display - It is LED arrays which are neatly
arranged, and can be used to display anything by color as
text or figure. Most of the modern LED signal panels use
different types of controller matrix panels, different sizes,
and different accuracy. The common features for this
component are: energy saving, long service life, low cost,
high brightness, wide viewing angle, long visual range,
water resistance, among others.
An LED display can meet the needs of different
applications and thus have broad development prospects,
especially as it can easily be integrated with many other
similar components. So, our proposed tool, depending on the
previous main components, will be as in the Fig. 4.
Proceedings of the 15th INDIACom; INDIACom-2021; IEEE Conference ID: 51348
2021 8th International Conference on “Computing for Sustainable Global Development”, 17th - 19th March, 2021
Fig. 4. LED display
B. Scenario of Proposed System Working
The project is a large surface of a group of LED Displays
connected to each other as a single matrix. After receiving a
notification about any event or abnormal case during Hajj,
the part of the group in the event area will be lighted in red.
So, at the beginning, we will surround the place in red color
to tell people that this area is forbidden and nobody can
enter, and it is better to stay away.
Moreover, the orange color will alert further crowds to
also not come to the event location, while the green paths
will help the people to stay in the safe and right way. So, the
controller can easily manage the flow of crowds to other
paths until the current issue is resolved.
Fig. 5. Example of smart street with an abnormal case
Fig. 5 depicts an example for color distribution on the
LED matrix. Note, the black color represents buildings, the
X refers to the locations of an event, the main path is closed
by the red color, and another two paths are opened by the
green color. The orange color notifies people around the area
to not enter the case’s area.
For future works, we plan to explore further about
managing crowds during the COVID-19 crisis, which is
more complex and needs great development in the ideas and
techniques used, and thus requires future work on suggesting
more ways to work with crowds during crises [28]. Recently,
some people have also become interested in building systems
for real-time crowd management within smart cities, but in a
manner that respects the privacy of individuals [32]-[42], by
employing artificial intelligence mechanisms and relying on
wireless sensors [29], [43].
IV. CONCLUSION
This research presented an idea to transform the crowd
area into a smart area that can be managed and controlled
flexibly, while ensuring a rapid response of people in the
crowd, to quickly deal with emergencies and abnormal
events that may affect the lives and health of thousands of
people in or near vacinity of the accident, due to the
difficulty in controlling crowds and their flow. Through the
idea of converting the floor into a smart surface, colors can
be used for easy observation, understood by all people of
different cultures and backgrounds, especially in an event
such as Hajj where millions of people come from all over the
world.
This research is an integral part of our previous research
[11] on the automatic detection of anomalous incidents such
as a stampede. The small demo has also been designed and
manufactured in real-time to demonstrate the applicability
and use of the proposed idea. More simulations and control
algorithms will be detailed in the subsequent work in
addition to a new idea to integrate with the new structure
such as special smart shoes and smart bracelets that respond
with color indicators to better facilitate and control the safe
movement of people.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The researchers thank the Deanship of Scientific
Research at the Islamic University of Madinah for funding
this research project.
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... Unlike the Pool of Bethesda, Makkah is a moment of sacrifice, a space of unified worship in the lives of Muslim worshipers. The journey to Makkah symbolizes the "farewell pilgrimage" of the Prophet Muhammad through the Arabian desert in 632 A.D. [1]. During the event, racial, socioeconomic, and national identities mesh into one Muslim identity as the global gathering of fasting and prayer promotes peace, spiritual cleansing, and goodwill toward others [1]. ...
... The journey to Makkah symbolizes the "farewell pilgrimage" of the Prophet Muhammad through the Arabian desert in 632 A.D. [1]. During the event, racial, socioeconomic, and national identities mesh into one Muslim identity as the global gathering of fasting and prayer promotes peace, spiritual cleansing, and goodwill toward others [1]. Historically, disease and armed conflict remain infamous as disrupters of Hajj, often preventing a complete execution of the event [1] [2] [3]. ...
... During the event, racial, socioeconomic, and national identities mesh into one Muslim identity as the global gathering of fasting and prayer promotes peace, spiritual cleansing, and goodwill toward others [1]. Historically, disease and armed conflict remain infamous as disrupters of Hajj, often preventing a complete execution of the event [1] [2] [3]. ...
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Unlike the Pool of Bethesda, Makkah is a moment of sacrifice, a space of unified worship in the lives of Muslim worshipers. The Makkah experience symbolizes the “farewell pilgrimage” of the Prophet Muhammad through the Arabian desert in 632 A.D. (Aljazeera, 2021). The annual Hajj expedition to the Saudi holy city is the fifth of the five Muslim Pillars of Islam. Hajj occurs during Dhu’al-Hijjah, the last month of the year according to the Islamic calendar. Millions of people from across the world assemble to pray in the direction of Ka’bah, the holiest Islamic shrine constructed by Abraham and Ishmael. The 2012 Hajj attracted more than 3 million pilgrims journeyed to Hajj. However, the 2019 SARS-CoV-2 outbreak has since forced decision-makers for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to take further preventive measures in the interests of public health that affect the outcomes of the traditional prayer and worship. Saudi Arabian government officials significantly downsized capacity and instituted protocols for attendance to the 2020 and 2021 Hajj events due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to Muslim pilgrimages, several nations have implemented mHealth apps designed for Covid-19 contact tracing, quarantine enforcement, symptom monitoring, and information provision for mass crowding events. Independently, the apps do not provide a holistic approach to Covid-19 transmission control in mass gatherings. A more universal, less intrusive technological approaches to managing and protecting the Hajj pilgrimage populations using credible, real-time data is needful. This study proposes an information-generating SMART app based on the success of prior apps, the implementation of a Smart Hajj application, which allows authorities to track Hajj pilgrim movement, and collect data as a part of efforts to prevent Covid-19 from disrupting centuries-old tradition Muslim pilgrimages to worship in sacred places.
... The study suggested the integration of effective technologies, such as data analysis, which can help in discovering useful information with the help of data mining, text analytics, and data visualization, which supports the decision-making process. Abi Sen performed a study to design a smart street for crowd management during the Hajj [9]. They showed that the crowd management seen during the Hajj is typical and that Hajj management has made many large improvements in the infrastructure of Hajj facilities, which have helped reduce overcrowding in the Holy Sites. ...
... The Kingdom used technology to facilitate the task of pilgrims through the expansion of artificial intelligence and digital technologies; this is consistent with what was stated in the studies of [8,9,22]. • Despite the great effort expended upon crowd organization and management, some negative outcomes were seen for some pilgrims or Umrah performers during the Hajj and Umrah seasons, and occurrence of crowding and stampede was seen in some places, which is consistent with what was indicated by Sonbol [22] in their studies. • Saudi women participated in crowd management in the Holy Sites and had a distinguished presence in many organizational, humanitarian and security fields. ...
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High-density gatherings have the potential to turn from a peaceful mass into a human disaster unless they are managed in an organized manner. Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Hajj implemented an integrated system based on artificial intelligence. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) was eager to take advantage of the techniques of artificial intelligence to conduct its strategic plan, considering limited pilgrims who would be allowed to perform the Hajj rites during these exceptional circumstances. In this study, the experience of the KSA in crowd management using artificial intelligence during the Hajj was examined to create a model for similar circumstances. This study employed the descriptive analytical method. The program Arc Gis Pro 2.9.2 was used to produce maps related to the study. A strategic analysis was also conducted regarding the experience of the KSA in crowd management using SWOT analysis concerning the study area. This study found that the KSA has become a leader in crowd management and a reference and role model in managing crowds through an expanded use of artificial intelligence during the COVID-19 pandemic. It undertook all necessary precautionary measures to protect the pilgrims, and no injuries were reported.
... The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has paid due attention to the concept of smart cities as a strategic goal of Vision 2030 in its digital transformation endeavor [12][13]. The Kingdom welcomes large crowds of tourists in Mecca and Al-Madinah to perform the religious rituals of Hajj and Umrah, and these numbers have also begun to multiply through the services provided by the government on the one hand and through plans to support recreational tourism on all cities and regions of the Kingdom, on the other [14][15]. ...
... Amnah Aldayri 421200304@qu.edu.sa 1 Department of Information Technology, College of Computer, Qassim University, 52571 Buraydah, Saudi Arabia for achieving crowd safety. One of the biggest challenges facing countries that host events that attract millions of people is crowd management and abnormal behavior detection [5]. According to recent study [6], observers who monitor multiple video screens simultaneously and manually can miss approximately 60% of the actions. ...
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Hajj is an annual Islamic event attended by millions of pilgrims every year from around the globe. It is considered to be the biggest religious event that includes large human crowds in the world. Managing such crowds and detecting abnormal behaviors is one of the most significant challenges for the host country, particularly the crowds of pilgrims. Most of the current solutions can only handle small-scale crowd management issues, that involve simple and clear abnormal behaviors. Therefore, there is a need to have a human abnormal behavior detection approach that can deal with large-scale crowd situations. This study aims to propose a computer vision-based framework that automatically analyzes video sequences and detects human abnormal behaviors. The Convolutional LSTM Autoencoder is used for analyzing video scenes and extracting valuable spatial and temporal features. The proposed approach has achieved a good loss reduction of 0.176587 in detecting abnormal pilgrims’ behavior. The results demonstrate a promising picture of the effectiveness of computer vision technologies to detect abnormal behavior in large-scale crowds.
... An AR based smartphone application was also used to manage the crowd during Hajj [205]. Last but not least, smart street was proposed to solve the Hajj crowd issue [206]. With the help of wireless sensor networks and distributed fog nodes, LED lights are used for managing the crowd. ...
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Hajj and Umrah are Muslims’ religious pilgrimages to Makkah, Saudi Arabia. Hajj is considered the largest annual gathering in the world. In Islam, every adult is obligated to conduct Hajj and Umrah at least once if he/she is in good health and can afford to do so. Hajj takes place between the 8 $^{\mathrm{ th}}$ and the 13 $^{\mathrm{ th}}$ day of Dhul Hijjah, which is the last month of the Islamic year while Umrah, the minor pilgrimage, could be done any time of the year. In Hajj, pilgrims, also known as Hajjis, travel around 15 km and pilgrims have the choice to do it by foot, bus or by train. The Hajj journey starts from Mina, which is considered the largest tent city in the world because it hosts more than 10,000 fire resistant tents, and includes various religious rituals. Around 3 million Muslims from more than 183 countries make Hajj every year and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is working on increasing this number. Since 1989, researchers in various ICT domains have tried leveraging their expertise in solving challenges and issues related to Hajj and Umrah. Although several papers have surveyed efforts using technology in Hajj and Umrah research, none of them was comprehensive. In this paper, I classified research efforts that used information and communication technologies for solving Hajj and Umrah challenges over the past 33 years based on their applications in 10 categories. I also identified more than 30 technologies used by researchers all over the world to address Hajj and Umrah issues and group research efforts based on these technologies for ease of access. Furthermore, open challenges were discussed and new technologies that could be used to address these challenges were proposed.
... In [27], researchers proposed a mechanism for rapid crowd alerts and routing control when an accident occurs by using the idea of a digital street that lights up in different colors to inform the crowd of places to avoid, in addition to distributing them to alternative paths. Finally, in [28], researchers suggested a smart mechanism based on fog and Internet of Things tools, an application that works on smartphones, to track people within the crowd and their purposes to solve the problem of getting lost in crowds. ...
... This can provide information on the size of the congestion and help in distributing the vehicular load to other streets. In our implementation of the framework, we used an image processing algorithm to calculate the severity of the congestion that has been previously published [63]. ...
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