Abstract
Turbulence in crowds due to random, unintentional and uncontrolled movement of the mass is a critical and deadly situation. Live concerts, football matches, festivals are examples of large crowd gatherings. One example of a regularly occurring highly crowded event is Hajj, where more than 3 million people gather in Makkah for five days every year to perform their rituals. Every individual performing Hajj wants to complete their rituals correctly by visiting specific places at specific dates and time. In the past, severe crowd stampedes and casualties have taken place, especially at the site of stoning the Jamarat. This paper presents an interactive tool for safe rescheduling of groups based on their preferences for performing the stoning ritual at Jamarat. The interactive visual tool allows end-users to handle the request of rescheduling on two parameters, safety and temporal preferences. The safety parameter considers the capacity of each road so that it will not cross the limit set by authorities, and the temporal preference parameter considers the time as per the Islamic school of Jurisprudence of the pilgrim. The tool can help schedule the movement of pilgrims incrementally and interactively. The tool was used successfully in Hajj'19. Furthermore, the tool provides visual analytics for stakeholders that helps in decision-making.