IoT in Large-Scale Events

Large-scale events in cities are predominantly taking place in the open air. Safety and security of the crowd and the balance between sound and noise levels for the audience and neighbors are important issues. IoT is the technology at hand to get data-driven, real-time insight into large-scale events. This chapter demonstrates the utilization of wearable IoT solutions to improve the safety, security, and crowd management and to reduce the noise level for neighbors of large-scale open-air events. We introduce the MONICA project, one of the five large-scale IoT pilots funded by the European Commission. The MONICA demonstrations address these challenges in 11 pilots in six major European cities with a large number of wearable devices and sensors. In this chapter, we shall cover the challenges in the context of large-scale open-air events in general and introduce the respective technical solutions, the architecture, and the IoT perspective in integrating a large number of heterogeneous sensors that are constantly monitored in real time. For improving the crowd management, crowd safety, and emergency responses, a large amount of wearables (for visitors and staff) are provided. Video processing and data fusion are used to estimate the number of visitors and to detect activity patterns. To improve the noise level for neighbors, sound level meters (SLMs) and dedicated loudspeakers are deployed in order to measure and control the sound and noise levels throughout the events.