An Optimized Scheduling Process For A Large Crowd To Perform Spatio-Temporal Movements Safely During Pilgrimage

Movement of a large crowd from one place to another smoothly is a challenging task. It becomes more critical where the large crowd from different nationalities move together in a defined time to perform specific duties such as Hajj. Hajj is one of the large congregations in the world, where more than 2 million pilgrims coming from all over the world gather in Makkah to perform the fifth pillar of Islam. To perform the Hajj rituals, the pilgrims should stay and move between the holy sites of Mashaer area(1) on specific days, and time. These spatio-temporal constraints are mandatory to follow to perform the Hajj acceptably. To manage the crowd efficiently, the authorities of Saudi Arabia grouped the pilgrims from all over the world in seven establishments based on nationalities. Specific places, routes and train stations are allocated to each establishment to perform spatio-temporal rituals in Mashaer area. In this paper, we present an optimised scheduling process that schedules the movement of pilgrims to perform spatio-temporal rituals safely using trains. The scheduling process depends on a variety of factors. Firstly, it depends on the train movement type, whether its B (Mina - Arafat), C (Arafat - Muzdalifah), or D (Muzdalifah - Mina). Secondly, the model also relies on the current pilgrims' camp location and the other camp location in the destination. Thirdly, the roads allowed from/to camps-stations also affect the scheduling process. Moreover, to avoid occurring crowd disasters, the scheduling process should monitor station capability to accommodate pilgrims. Our algorithm has been used in Hajj 2019 for three movements (B, C and D) in Mashaer Area. The result shows the analytics of our scheduling algorithm along with comparison between the scheduled time and actual time for each station in Mashaer area in Hajj 2019.