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How many people in a crowd? Tech has the answer

Estimating the number of people in a crowd has always been difficult. People come and go; they move at different rates; they carry objects, like bags, and so on. When protest marches take place there are always differences between the numbers present, in terms of what authorities or the police force estimate and what the organizers claim. The current method for estimating crowd numbers is the Jacobs’s Method. This somewhat old-fashioned way consists of dividing the area occupied by a crowd into sections. Then, determining an average number of people in each section. Finally this number is multiplyied by the number of sections occupied. This old way of doing things could now all change thanks to some technological advancements.

Researchers think that signals from smartphones and social media activity can be used to provide more meaningful estimates of large numbers of people congregating in the same space. Scientists based at Warwick University (U.K.) have undertaken an eight-week study into geo-tagged tweets and mobile phone use stemming from different sized groups of people in Milan. The spaces chosen included a busy airport (Linate Airport) and a soccer stadium (San Siro football stadium). The researchers took note of Twitter, calls and SMS, and Internet activity.

Speaking with the BBC, lead researcher Dr Tobias Preis admitted that there are still some problems with such data, not least with those who do not carry smartphones and in situations where cell phone signals are weak. The margin of error from the studies was 13 percent. However, Preis thinks that the results represent a major step-forwards. Here he said: “it’s a very, very good base to build on, to provide initial estimates.”

Whether such data gathering has a social good is debatable. The researchers, however, think the answer here is “yes,” for they conclude their paper stating: “our findings suggest that data generated through our interactions with mobile phone networks and the Internet may allow us to gain valuable measurements of the current state of society.”

The findings have been published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. The research paper is titled “Quantifying crowd size with mobile phone and Twitter data.”

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Written By

Dr. Tim Sandle is Digital Journal's Editor-at-Large for science news. Tim specializes in science, technology, environmental, business, and health journalism. He is additionally a practising microbiologist; and an author. He is also interested in history, politics and current affairs.

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