YESYOUROPE EVENT SAFETY GROUP

DECEMBER 2015

REEPERBAHN, HAMBURG

23RD & 24TH SEPTEMBER 2015

YES SEMINAR REPORT

Introduction............................................4

Issues from the Summer Festivals............6

Event Technology ..................................10Crowd Monitoring & Counting Tools

Safety Concepts .....................................14Contracts for Suppliers

Eurosonic Nooderslag...........................15

Counter Terrorism..................................16Marauding Terrorists & Firearms/Weapons Attack

Crowd Management Planning..............18

Crowd Management Considerations...21

The YES Group.......................................22

CONTENTS

3

INTRODUCTION

The Open Seminar of the YES Group 2015 took place at the famous Reep-

erbahn in Hamburg at the opulent East Hotel, a design hotel noted for it’s

fantastic hospitality and conference facilities.

The YES Seminar at Reeperbahn, Hamburg was an opportunity for those

working in the events and festivals industry to attend and share best prac-

tice, experiences from the 2015 season and share knowledge with others

regarding innovation and change.

The seminar was very well attended with over 40 participants attending

both days of the event. Henrik Nielsen of the YES Group introduced the

seminar and welcomed both new and familiar faces to the 20th European

Health & Safety Seminar.

5

ISSUES FROM THE SUMMER

FESTIVALSAs is tradition at the European Health & Safety Seminars, the opening session looked back at the

past festival season. This allowed those who attended the seminar to discuss issues that arose at

their events. This gives the opportunity to learn from this experience in regard to planning and man-

agement for future events. The willingness of the attendees to share their experiences and to learn

from the wealth of knowledge in the room is the key aspect of the YES Seminars.

There were some interesting comments regard-

ing weather, a perennial issue for those man-

aging outdoor events. This included the com-

munication issues, where mixed messages are

received about the weather approaching the

festival site and the good practice that can be in-

cluded at the planning stage. Lessons had been

learnt from previous planning exercises carried

out at YES seminars and it was great to see ex-

amples of the theory, which had been previously

discussed, put into practice.

Paleo festival, represented by Pascal Viot, stated

that weather was always one of the most difficult

issues to manage and that event management

has to look at structures and crowd safety with

weather in mind. Paleo had very mixed weather

conditions this year, with a heat wave and then

a very sudden onset of heavy rainfall. The very

quick change between the two situations made

the event difficult to manage.Tabletop training

is one way to simulate issues in the field and

such exercises will be introduced for future YES

seminars, starting with the sessions to be held at

Missenden Abbey in the UK in September 2016.

It is also hard to predict actions of the weather

and the damage that can be caused by different

elements. This year Roskilde had a very slight

wind affecting one of their stages, but this was

strong enough to cause a light to fall from the

rigging. However, fortunately there was a back-

up rigging system which stopped it from falling

on a DJ who as performing at the time.

Paul Twomey of Robertson Taylor shared an in-

teresting perspective with the group. He stated

that it is very important to have a clear refund/

part refund policy in place. An example was giv-

en of an outdoor one-day music event, where

the event was required to shut and evacuate af-

ter 8 hours. The majority of the event had taken

place, but because the audience was required

to leave at the request of the management a

question of refund eligibility was raised.

Events have to be specifi c about the offering

and Paul gave the example of a concert, which

stated on the marketing materials that there

would be “over 2 hours of Elton John perform-

ing live”. In reality he performed for 1 hour and

57 minutes and people asked for their money

back.

Another comment emphasised the importance

of the planning time available to summer festi-

vals in the winter months. If enough extensive

planning is done out of season, then the action

plan which ties together all of the insurance pol-

icies should be in place. People like ownership

of certain aspects of the event planning, but it

is important to try not to dilute responsibility,

which extends the decision-making process.

Having a plan in place, which can be adapted at

any stage, is benefi cial and the plan should be a

‘living’ document rather than collecting dust in

a drawer.

Andy Mestka from Open Air St. Gallen, had two

fi re-based incidents this summer. The fi rst was a

deep fat fryer catching fi re. A very experienced

cook extinguished the fi re very quickly, but the

smoke went into the tent causing problems.

Security tried to intervene but this put them in

danger as the gases were toxic. 10 people were

admitted to hospital. The second incident was a

fi re in a straw storage facility. The weather had

been extremely hot and dry during the festival

and the straw became combustible. Fire vol-

unteers were on site and the fi re brigade were

there within ten minutes. The reaction on social

media was manageable and didn’t over empha-

sise what had happened. However, there was

damage to nearby tents and those that had

been affected put in claims for damages. The

straw storage facility has been on site for the last

30 years. Complacency is the enemy of safety.

Pohoda festival had issues with criminal behav-

ior. Over 100 cars had their tyres slashed. As Po-

hoda only has one exit and cars were blocking

this, the festival had to change their exit plans.

Emergency repair vehicles had to be able to

access the site as well as visitors being able to

leave. Water and food were distributed to those

that were affected by the traffi c queuing and

8

luckily there were no repercussions on social

media.

Hamburg’s event, Cruise Day’s, was affected by

factors out of their immediate control. Cruise

Day’s had 6 cruise ships in the Hamburg port

and over 60,000 visitors to the city were expect-

ed. Right-wing activists staged a demo for the

duration of the event and 2800 police were in

attendance. The main rail station was shut down

and this had a huge impact as all the suppliers

for the event were outsourced and they were

unable to access the city easily. The main rail

station closure also meant that passengers who

were scheduled to travel on the ships were una-

ble to get to them. This is an example of a sce-

nario that it is hard to plan for. It emphasized

the need for contingency communication plans

to alert event attendees about problems before

they travel to the event. Demonstrations are

having an increasing impact on events as they

stand outside the law. Political issues are be-

coming more apparent in Europe, which seems

to link with the fear of terror and the ‘migrant

crisis’.

Some festivals in 2015 were affected by long

lasting, high temperatures, which were not ex-

pected. Planning ahead seemed to work for is-

sues such as keeping attendees hydrated and

informed about how to look after themselves,

but tarmac melting was not something that had

been foreseen!

The concept of the ‘last mile’ was also dis-

cussed. There is a blurred line with regards to

who exactly is responsible for attendees of an

event once they are outside the event footprint.

Attendees of the Pohoda festival destroyed a

train after the event and were involved in fights

with security personnel, but this was after the

event had ended and was in the public domain.

However, these people were only in the vicinity

because they had attended the event.

Audience profiling was an issue at Keigel festival.

One band on the main stage followed another

with a very different audience types. There were

clashes between young girls and heavy metal

fans as one group tried to leave the stage area

and the other group entered. This was com-

pounded by the development of a bottleneck.

This didn’t allow for the migration to and from

the stage of the large volume of people in the

area during changeover.

Drones have affected festivals this year and due

to being a relatively new product in the market

there was not existing guidance in place with re-

gards to their use. This will prove to be an inter-

esting discussion at the YES seminar in January

2016 at Eurosonic Nooderslag.

9

EVENT TECHNOLOGY

Crowd Monitoring and Counting Tools

After 2 years of testing at Roskilde, Crowd Track-

er has been developed to focus on the area

of crowd numbers. This is based on the use of

smartphones.

Using GPS based receivers, the data received

from the festival goers phones goes to a cloud-

based database and can generate a range of in-

formation displays, such as heat maps, density

overviews and analysis reports.

The Crowd Tracker is used to gather information

from the festival attendees as well as to push

information to the guests to enhance their ex-

perience. Guest privacy is very important when

it comes to using Big Data and Crowd Tracker

are working in cooperation with the University

of Munich to develop their research and answer

some of the questions which are contentious in

the use of this type of research tool in the public

arena.

Simon Dittman, Crowd Tracker, and James Cobb, Crowd Connected, gave an insight

to the advances in crowd monitoring and counting tools and the possibilities that this

technology holds for event management in the very near future.

Crowd Tracker has a web interface with a user

login and people/users of the application are

able to delete their data if they so require. The

user only knows the specifics of the tracking ID

and so an element of privacy is retained. In or-

der for the application to be successfully used at

Roskilde the phone network is boosted for the 8

days of the festival and readings are taken every

15 minutes. More frequently would be more ac-

curate, but would drain the battery of the user

and this is a valuable resource for those in the

festival environment.

The possibilities for the use of Crowd Tracker

in a event and festival environment seem to be

endless, but there are some challenges:

• Crowd Tracker will need to be made oper-

ational and relevant to the site in which it is

being utilized.

11

• Ownership of data collected is a question

that is recurring. The data is uploaded to the

cloud, but a reliable partner will need to be

chosen wisely with regards to data storage.

• Data back up and service availability

• User privacy

• Media perception

At present Crowd Tracker is available on Android

and IOS systems.

James Cobb, Crowd Connected, then gave a

presentation on the use of a similar measuring

and data collection tool that has been used at

festivals in the UK. James stressed that any infor-

mation pulled from this type of system will never

be 100% accurate as there are so many factors

affecting it. A key factor for a festival is the num-

ber of people who have actually made it through

the 5 stages of downloading the app, register-

ing their details, giving permission for the app to

track, and turning the application and GPS on. It

is therefore always essential to remember that

one is only ever getting a reading from a propor-

tionate sample. In order to increase the accura-

cy of the reading, boosting app download and

sign in’s is essential and the best way to do this is

to make the app useful to the event attendees,

without draining their precious phone battery.

Previous versions of this type of technology had

an accuracy of within 50m, but this is not rele-

vant to the festival environment as the site is

often a restricted size, with very quick changes

in user activity. Crowd Connected have tackled

this issue by using more than one signal. There

are indoor and outdoor transmitters and by us-

ing as many as possible on the site the accuracy

can be pinpointed to within less than 5m. Crowd

Connected also ‘pings’ information between

the phone with the active application and other

phones, which are switched on, but not running

the app. This gives an even more enhanced pic-

ture of the festival activity.

The data produced by the Crowd Connected

application is real time, which makes it relevant

for so many uses within the festival setting, espe-

cially those regarding crowd management and

security.

With regards to calculating capacity, it is very

hard to quantify what the percentage error is. It

is never going to be 100% accurate, but by using

the app along with other measures such as tick-

et scanners, CCTV footage and on the ground

staffing a best guess can be made. Heat maps

and calculations made from the Crowd Connect-

ed data are never going to replace other sourc-

es of information, but they can add supplement

these.

The festival site can be split into zones and spe-

cific data can be pulled from the dashboard.

12

This can fi t in with security zoning, crowd man-

agement planning and staffi ng levels to ensure

that the festival is delivering to the best of its

abilities.

Dwell time can be accurately measured through

the application and this has many commercial

and marketing possibilities. Waiting times at

bars can be measured and appropriately man-

aged with a call to action based on the data re-

ceived and movement of the people through the

festival can give an indication of those that are

attending the festival for the ‘music’ and those

that are attending for other reasons.

The next stage in the development of Crowd

Connected is using the wristbands which are be-

ing encouraged by some festivals, as they elim-

inate the need for any cash transactions as this

means that the accuracy of the readings can be

increased to just a few metres as there will such

a lot of data being transferred if everyone is the

crowd was transmitting.

SAFETY CONCEPTS

Contracts for Suppliers

SAFETY CONCEPTS

Daniel Schlatter led a workshop, which he hopes

will develop into a paper, which he is able to take

forward to be presented to the YES Group at a

future date. The main case for this was to ensure

that responsibilities of all parties involved in pro-

duction are known and clearly communicated.

From an event health and safety management

perspective, it is also key to make sure your

own rules have been followed. It is essential to

make sure that there is not a gap between the

safety concept and the reality. As event manag-

ers it is our responsibility to make sure that re-

sources are in place and to defi ne the resources

required for the event well in advance, rather

than the guessing and fi nding out that you have

under ordered. Communicating to concession-

aires is an important aspect of the event. Their

contract must state all of the health and safety

requirements that they need to comply with for

the event.

14

YESYOUROPE EVENT SAFETY GROUP

THE 21ST EUROPEAN HEALTH & SAFETY SEMINAR

13TH & 14TH JANUARY 2016

EUROSONIC-NOODERSLAG

To book a place at the seminar please visit https://webshop.eurosonic-noorderslag.nl/buma-shop/invitation/c2aq2bpcuodo

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Please note that this seminar is for members of Yourope. For membershipenquities, please visit: www.yourope.org

Garth West presented on counter-terrorism, ma-

rauding terrorists and fi rearms/weapons attacks.

Garth was representing CTU’s (Counter Terror-

ism Unit’s) in the UK of which there are 6.

Garth explained how the different levels of

threat are utilized and the defi nition of each.

There are 5 different threat levels, which fall into

three wider bands of ‘normal’, ‘heightened’ and

‘exceptional’.

A key point of Garth’s presentation is that we

have to move away from stereotypical views of

what a terrorist looks like. We have to have a

broader understanding so that we do not limit

our perceptions.

Unsophisticated and simple attacks by a lone

actor are becoming increasingly more frequent.

This means that the attacker will not draw atten-

tion to themselves and can penetrate a crowded

space. Events that are targeted are often those

that promote ‘freedom of speech’. Lone actors

however don’t have intelligence leaks, as there

is no chain of communication. Radicalisation is

the method of vulnerable persons being used as

tools by higher powers and encouraged to act

for the ‘greater good’.

COUNTER TERRORISM

Marauding Terrorists & Firearms/Weapons Attack

16

Garth stated that iconic buildings are now too

well protected and it would take a lot of effort to

penetrate the structure as security and defence

measures are always in place. Softer targets are

more readily accessible and the example of

Westminster tube station was given as this is an

easily accessible place, but it would have a huge

impact on the surrounding area, which houses

iconic structures such as the clock tower that

houses Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament,

which would in turn make the attack instantly

recognizable as taking place in Central London.

Garth recommended the CPNI and NACTSO

websites for reference as they have detailed

guidance on terror attacks in crowded spaces.

There are useful video guides available online,

such as the ‘run, hide, tell’ video which Garth

aired during his presentation. It is key that peo-

ple on the ground at an event know what to do,

and this is relevant to all levels of employees and

volunteers. Evacuation has to be a controlled

event, which has to ensure that people are not

moved into the line of fi re and often, if it is pos-

sible, lockdown may be the better option.

Communication is key, as is true in so many cas-

es regarding crowd management and everyone

has to know that a gunman is present. If they

don’t know this crucial information, then they will

not be able to make an informed decision about

the required course of action. Text messaging

services such, as those used at large events are

a great way to get the message out to guests

at the event. Simple effective messaging, which

gets the point across is key and this should be

considered for the crowd management plan.

Hostile reconnaissance is also something that

event organisers and management should be

aware of. Insider threats from staff and volun-

teers are something to be aware of. Lone actors,

acting from the inside will require knowledge

of the site. For example, fencing and security

measures and will attempt to gather data and

record their fi ndings. Any suspicious activity with

regard to this matter must be acted upon and

challenged.

17

Pascal Viot, Paleo Festival, looked at the key points to be considered in crowd man-

agement planning and Steve Allen, Crowd Safety, explained how event management

can learn from their mistakes.

Pascal Viot, Paleo festival, stated that crowd management planning can be split into 4 key areas;

urban planning, crowd control vs. crowd management, risk management and technology.

Urban planning: We can think of festival sites as an ‘ephemeral city’ safety has to be included in the

process as they can be pressured environments.

Crowd control vs. crowd management: Skills are needed for effi cient communication. We have to

remember that we as festivals cannot act as the police, but we can create a conditioning system.

This should not be an active role in at the festival, but one of maintenance and monitoring.

Risk management: One event can have many impacts including natural, organizational, social and

logistical. We have to strive for a balance between planning and improvisation. For managing risk,

it may be benefi cial to have a separate workforce specifi cally for rapid response. Even a festival

such as Paleo, which has been running for 40 years, will have mixed experiences from one edition

to another, meaning that the management has to adjust accordingly.

Technology: Technology is being used more and more within the festival setting and can be used

to manage risk in ways including allocating staffi ng to the areas which need it and for monitoring

the actions of the crowd. Technology allows us to analyse risk and focus on the reality of the event

taking place, rather than the assumption. It is important not to use technology just because it is

available. It has to add some value to the management and a clearly defi ned purpose.

CROWD MANAGEMENT

PLANNING

19

Steve Allen is a respected crowd management

practitioner and consultant from the UK who

feels that it is essential to admit if you have made

a mistake, and that the only way to improve is to

learn from mistakes made.

Steve feels that crowd management is a very

subjective fi eld to work in. Theory and expe-

rience are both necessary and you have to be

able to demonstrate your qualifi cations in order

to gain the confi dence of those in the industry.

There are many reasons why crowd management

is necessary, such as documentation laying our

how you meet legal and guidance requirements,

professionalism, peace of mind and having con-

fi dence that your event will be a success. It is im-

portant to tailor the crowd management plan to

the specifi c event as an event with 500 attend-

ees will need to be managed in a very different

way to an event that has 120,000 attendees. It

is essential that crowd managers are involved

in the crowd management plan and the event

planning from the embryonic stage onwards.

The document has to be proactive and contrib-

ute towards the event development and should

not be considered as a reactive exercise.

The plan has to be kept as a live document and

it has to be able to withstand scrutiny. The per-

sons responsible for the crowd management

plan need to wholeheartedly believe that they

have put the best plan in place for the specifi cs

of their event and it has be to functional as well

as upholding the three pillars of responsibility;

legal, fi nancial and moral.

The approach of the crowd management plan

has to be system wide. The question ‘what if’ has

to be asked repeatedly and every foreseeable

eventuality considered.

Some considerations for crowd management planning are outlined below, but it is key to remember

that these will always be event specific:

Infrastructure

• both internal and external to the event

Information

• wayfinding & signage

• Stress/anxiety

• Social media channels – customer as well as event information, with the ability of the event to

respond

• Digital ticketing – to capture attendees data to aid with mail outs, advance information and com-

munication prior to, during and after the event.

General

• Rumor

• Social media – if an official source is online then rumours can be quickly quashed.

• Intoxication – pre-loading and during event

• Artists – crowd surfing

• Food poisoning

• Sound levels

• Fire/fireworks

• Movement/pressure/panic within the crowded space

• Failure of essential supplies (e.g. water/lighting/power)

• Artist control – what they say to the audience can affect their behavior

• Mobility impaired guests – they have the right to move around the festival as much as anyone

else.

CROWD MANAGEMENT CONSIDERATIONS

21

YESYOUROPE EVENT SAFETY GROUP

THE 22ND EUROPEAN HEALTH & SAFETY SEMINAR

29TH & 30TH SEPTEMBER 2016

MISSENDEN ABBEY, UK

The Yourope Event Safety Group (YES Group) was formed when Yourope took over the delivery of

Health and safety Seminars from the International Live Music Conference Safety Focus Group.

Following the Roskilde disaster in 2000, a group was formed to work with festivals across Europe to

develop safer events and to try and instigate projects and research which would result in new ideas

and innovations in health, safety and crowd management across Europe.

With the YES Group, a focused development of education across Europe was created and through

a series of seminars, a European dialogue, network, and way of sharing knowledge has developed

and allowed good practice to be communicated.

THE YES GROUP