Heading overseas? New map shows where to avoid deadly crowd incidents

Heading overseas? New map shows where to avoid deadly crowd incidents
By James Harrison


It may not seem like something most travellers worry about before heading on holiday, but deadly crowd incidents overseas are more common than some think.

Coming to the rescue with a comprehensive database of deaths and injuries caused by crowd incidents around the world is UNSW, which analysed major global incidents’ between 1900 and 2019.

The directory features details of 281 major global incidents occurring in this timeframe that resulted in at least one death, or 10 people being injured. And the data shows that India and West Africa are increasingly becoming hot spots for crowd accidents, with religious festivals overtaking sporting events in the past 30 years as the most likely situation to result in a dangerous crush.

Other areas where numerous deadly incidents have occurred in the past few years include South-East Asia and the Middle East.

Overall, serious crowd accidents across the globe have risen dramatically over the past 20 years – from an average of around three per year between 1990 and 1999, to nearly 12 per year between 2010 and 2019 – although it is acknowledged some of that may be due to the growth of the internet and social media which ensures incidents are more widely reported.

A visualisation of crowd safety incidents across the world since 1900, showing the location, year of occurrence and number of fatalities for each accident – Image supplied by Associate Professor Claudio Feliciani & Dr Milad Haghani.

The researchers, including lead author Project Associate Professor Claudio Feliciani from the University of Tokyo and Dr Milad Haghani from UNSW Sydney, presented their findings in the Safety Science journal. They say it is imperative that safety experts have such a complete database and detailed analysis of crowd accidents to help implement new safeguards to reduce the dangers in future.

“Just in the past 20 years alone around 8000 people have been killed in crowd accidents and more than 15,000 have been injured,” said Dr Milad Haghani from UNSW’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

“Over time, the share of sport events in crowd accidents has declined, and instead, religious gatherings have become more notably present in the statistics.

“We have strong indications that the introduction of more regulations regarding crowd safety at sporting events in the past 30 years has added an extra layer of protection.”

While you may think that these crowd accidents are mainly at overseas religious events, the publishers of the paper have warned Aussie event organisers and attendees not to get complacent.

The only Australian incident in the database is the crush during a performance by Limp Bizkit at the 2001 Big Day Out event in Sydney which resulted in the death of a young woman.

“I speak with a lot of professionals on a daily basis and they regularly see near-misses at events that thankfully do not result in deaths or serious injuries,” Dr Haghani says.

“Those incidents might not get any publicity, and information about what actually happened might not subsequently be shared so the danger is that it could be just a matter of time before something bad happens in Australia.”

A/Prof Feliciani added: “There were very few incidents in South Korea for many decades and then unfortunately the very serious crush at the Halloween festival in 2022 in Seoul where nearly 160 people died.

“So I think it is always important to be careful and mindful of crowd safety wherever you are and not to become complacent.”

Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

Crowd Accidents

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