Crowd flow analysis for 2014 FIFA World Cup venues

In 2008 Brazil was awarded the right to host the 2013 Confederations Cup and 2014 FIFA World Cup. As part of the preparations, Brazil chose to invest in twelve new and extensively refurbished football stadia to be show cased to the world.

As part of the preparations, the Local Organising Committee realised the need to ensure that  all the venues met international best practice for stadia design regarding the safety of spectators.

Over a five-year period we provided specialist crowd flow and transport advice to the design teams, construction companies and local organising committees of nine of the twelve world cup stadiums. The services included: Crowd flow modelling, vehicle circulation and parking design, venue and city transport plans, ‘last mile’ planning, operational strategies, legacy and master planning, overlay planning; and signage & wayfinding.

During the initial planning stages of the World Cup we assisted the Local Organising Committee on defining the crowd safety requirements to be implemented on all of the projects, as well as providing specialist advice to the São Paulo Fire Brigade to revise and update their stadia crowd safety standards (Instrução Técnica IT-12).  These standards were then adopted nationally, helping to ensure a permanent legacy for future sport venue planning in the country.

Successes and outcomes

Utilising both static and dynamic pedestrian modelling techniques we analysed each stadium design in detail and then provided design solutions to be incorporated which ensured that the projects met local and international crowd safety standards. Several of the venues were already under construction, therefore our recommendations needed to consider construction and structural constraints already built.

In addition, 6 months before the event we were commissioned by the São Paulo Organising Committee to provide event operational planning advice, working closely with the local transport operators for the main stadium transport hubs (CPTM and Metrô). The work included detailed pedestrian modelling of the metro and train stations, recommendations for match day operational strategies both inside and outside the stations and for the ‘last mile’. The majority of these recommendations were implemented in time to ensure the event was a complete success.