An Intelligent Computational Real-time Virtual Environment Model for Efficient Crowd Management

During the annual Islamic pilgrimage (Hajj), the movement of vehicles and pedestrians from Arafat to Muzdalifah during the Nafrah of pilgrims is known to suffer from severe bottlenecks that often result in arrival of thousands of pilgrims to Muzdalifah well after dawn. This paper proposes a framework for developing an intelligent real-time virtual environment model for facilitating efficient and timely vehicles traffic movement during the Nafrah utilizing various movement scenarios, simulation and optimization methods. The model utilizes intelligent agents within a real-time 3D virtual environment that represents the Nafrah from Arafat location coverage. The proposed framework has three primary phases each of which has specific components: (a) spatial analysis of current pedestrians and vehicles access in the Nafrah location coverage from Arafat to Muzdalifah; (b) evaluation of movement efficiency of current scenarios of the Nafrah using computational simulation; and (c) development of a multi-agents system within a real-time 3D virtual environment for improving the movement efficiency of vehicles traffic in the Nafrah. The proposed model can be used by decision makers (Hajj authorities) during the Nafrah from Arafat to Muzdalifah in order to achieve an efficient performance of crowd management.