Sydney Olympic Park is partnering with Dynamic Crowd Measurement (DCM) to explore how tech can help us create safer, crowded places.

DCM is rich, data driven intelligence which support in the moment decisions based on advanced real-time analytics. It provides insights on audience sentiment, movement and occupancy levels to help streamline resources, drive engagement, improve planning input and maximise market spend.

We were able to see DCM in action in 2020 when major events returned after the first COVID lockdown with strict requirements for social distancing.This technology allowed us to monitor crowd behaviour around the train station and intervene where necessary to maintain social distancing.It also provides data to help planning for future events.

How does it work?

This new technology will build on the crowd modelling systems that draws data from the existing CCTV network and bring in additional data from other sources (including social media and environmental systems) to alert the SOPA team to changes in customer sentiment about places, particularly during major events and instances of ‘crowded places’, so that proactive and early intervention can lead to better public safety outcomes. The data gathered can be used in the following ways:

• We can see what happens when we deploy more police and how this impacts customer sentiment so that we can make better plans for future events
• Through social media, we can also see how our interventions are resonating with customers – do fun interventions make it onto Instagram and is this a better form of intervention?
• In a time when weather events are becoming more frequent, we can use data from environmental sensors to see how this impacts how customers are feeling. When faced with future events with similar weather predictions, how we can use the retrospective data to help us plan the right interventions.