Crowd management has taken on a renewed importance in our cities following the outbreak of Covid-19 in autumn 2019.  Along with important economic and social changes we have also seen our mobility and safety in urban spaces compromised.  City Councils are required to anticipate and adapt strategies to maintain low-level or no-transmission status while allowing citizens to safely engage in daily activities.   

The CityFlows project, financed by the EIT Urban Mobility and in conjunction with Barcelona City Council and Delft University, aims to play a pivotal role and improve the economic and social functioning of our 21st century cities in a pandemic scenario.  The overall goal is to improve the liveability of crowded pedestrian spaces through the provision of decision-support for the management of pedestrian flows. 

CENIT´s Paco Gasparín explains more “Our CityFlows project tests and evaluates various innovative crowd monitoring techniques in real-life settings where large crowds meet, such as mass events, tourist spaces and transfer hubs. Moreover, the CityFlows project prepares a unique crowd management decision support system for market launch which incorporates these state-of-the-art monitoring techniques.”

Gasparín continues “In fact last month we just ran a 5 day pilot in Barcelona´s Park Guell which we´re delighted to report has been a great success and provided the team with further data and valuable insights”

Intertwining health and mobility CityFlows will develop a toolkit that allows City Councils to determine the most effective safety measures to be taken into account for crowd control in urban areas.

Keep up to date with CityFlows Innovating crowd monitoring practice (cityflows-project.eu)

Paco Gasparín is an Urban Mobility and Freight Transport Researcher at CENIT

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