Designing a comprehensive framework for health management in crowded events

Many countries witness the organization of various events, whether sports, religious, artistic, cultural, or even political. These events gather large crowds in specific locations. A minor incident within these crowds can escalate into a disaster if not dealt with immediately and effectively. Therefore, crowd management and ensuring its safety present significant challenges to date. Preserving the safety and health of participants within crowds is one of the most sensitive issues, which becomes even more complex during pandemics. Unfortunately, there are still no effective solutions to guarantee the safety and health of crowds. The world has witnessed disasters in recent years that have led to the deaths of thousands in crowds. This research presents a classification of all challenges facing crowds. Then, it proposes a comprehensive framework to address them and enhance the health and safety of participants. The framework relies on integrating various solutions and technologies in the form of stages, tasks, and services. The research also proposes a crowd-monitoring algorithm and smart scheduling for the sanitization process, in addition to early warning and emergency procedures in case of any threat. The algorithm is based on image processing and text analysis. The algorithm has been tested on a dataset for a set of crowd images and others for tweets about various incidents, achieving an accuracy exceeding 98%. The framework will enhance the level of safety and health in crowds and pave the way for many future supporting services which can be provided via a general application for smartphones.