Simulate the Dam to Dam run
Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2024 8:34 am
All aspects
After the government banned all events until September 1 and increasingly spoke about 'the one-and-a-half-meter society', Le Champion defined a total of 18 task groups. With the task of looking at what is possible with the one-and-a-half-meter guideline and how the events can be organized in a safe and responsible manner. There were task groups for the course, care stations and start and finish, among other things. Everything was considered and weighed: fewer runners, bringing your own water (no care stations), closing to the public, multiple start and finish points...
This is to answer the question: can a Dam tot Damloop be held at a distance of 1.5 metres? With the main conclusion: it seems possible to organise it in a safe and responsible manner. But then you would have to be satisfied with considerably fewer participants. For the Dam tot Dam Walk, for example, instead of 14,000 walkers, you could only have around 2,000 walkers start.
Simulate large groups
Can you tell in advance whether a plan with a limited number of runners will work? Yes, it can. The company that has a track record in this is uCrowds. The company is a spin-off of Utrecht University that developed software to simulate crowds during the COMMIT/ program. By crowds we mean groups of people who individually walk their own path (literally), and who come into contact with or near other people. Simulating groups of people is the basis for seeing in which circumstances problems can occur.
Ideally, you model each person as an individual. One person is in a hurry, another is strolling around. Parents with children walk differently than a group of teenagers. The interplay of all these people can lead to congestion and calamities. This is somewhat similar to the so-called chaos or butterfly theory: a small change can have major consequences. A small congestion because someone is temporarily not walking can later lead to major crowds in other places.
Also read: How guerrilla marketing & storytelling reinforce each other [3 cases]
These types of simulations can be performed france telegram data by the uCrowds software. For example, before the start of the Tour de France in Utrecht, they looked at the extent to which visitors to the cycling race can flow through properly and whether problems can occur. Changes to the barrier can then be calculated again to see what is possible and what is not.
They could also do this for a running competition. In fact, it is even easier to model runners than a normal group of people. Runners are all going in the same direction. Not all at the same speed, but there is no current that goes against it or crosses.
I spoke to Roland Geraerts (founder of uCrowds and university lecturer in Computer Science at the UU) to ask him what he could do, in terms of runners but also in terms of visitors. According to him, they are able to model both groups taking into account social distancing , maximum numbers of groups of people per number of square meters, and so on. Because a race is most fun with people on the sidelines cheering you on. This flow is something uCrowds has a lot of experience with. Runners move differently, but you can also take their specific characteristics into account. There is a wealth of data (35+ years of results) available, from which speed and numbers of runners can be extracted to create a simulation that is true to life.
Testing different scenarios.
After the government banned all events until September 1 and increasingly spoke about 'the one-and-a-half-meter society', Le Champion defined a total of 18 task groups. With the task of looking at what is possible with the one-and-a-half-meter guideline and how the events can be organized in a safe and responsible manner. There were task groups for the course, care stations and start and finish, among other things. Everything was considered and weighed: fewer runners, bringing your own water (no care stations), closing to the public, multiple start and finish points...
This is to answer the question: can a Dam tot Damloop be held at a distance of 1.5 metres? With the main conclusion: it seems possible to organise it in a safe and responsible manner. But then you would have to be satisfied with considerably fewer participants. For the Dam tot Dam Walk, for example, instead of 14,000 walkers, you could only have around 2,000 walkers start.
Simulate large groups
Can you tell in advance whether a plan with a limited number of runners will work? Yes, it can. The company that has a track record in this is uCrowds. The company is a spin-off of Utrecht University that developed software to simulate crowds during the COMMIT/ program. By crowds we mean groups of people who individually walk their own path (literally), and who come into contact with or near other people. Simulating groups of people is the basis for seeing in which circumstances problems can occur.
Ideally, you model each person as an individual. One person is in a hurry, another is strolling around. Parents with children walk differently than a group of teenagers. The interplay of all these people can lead to congestion and calamities. This is somewhat similar to the so-called chaos or butterfly theory: a small change can have major consequences. A small congestion because someone is temporarily not walking can later lead to major crowds in other places.
Also read: How guerrilla marketing & storytelling reinforce each other [3 cases]
These types of simulations can be performed france telegram data by the uCrowds software. For example, before the start of the Tour de France in Utrecht, they looked at the extent to which visitors to the cycling race can flow through properly and whether problems can occur. Changes to the barrier can then be calculated again to see what is possible and what is not.
They could also do this for a running competition. In fact, it is even easier to model runners than a normal group of people. Runners are all going in the same direction. Not all at the same speed, but there is no current that goes against it or crosses.
I spoke to Roland Geraerts (founder of uCrowds and university lecturer in Computer Science at the UU) to ask him what he could do, in terms of runners but also in terms of visitors. According to him, they are able to model both groups taking into account social distancing , maximum numbers of groups of people per number of square meters, and so on. Because a race is most fun with people on the sidelines cheering you on. This flow is something uCrowds has a lot of experience with. Runners move differently, but you can also take their specific characteristics into account. There is a wealth of data (35+ years of results) available, from which speed and numbers of runners can be extracted to create a simulation that is true to life.
Testing different scenarios.