"Prepare for Crowds and Vehicles at Festivals"… Seoul City to Create Crowd Density Maps

Goal for October 2025
"Prevention-Centered Scientific Crowd Safety Management"

The Seoul Metropolitan Government is promoting the development of a crowd density map and safety index to establish scientific and systematic measures and standards for crowd safety accidents.

According to Seoul City on the 10th, a bid announcement is currently underway for the development of the crowd density map and safety index, and once the project executor is decided next month, the project will officially commence with the goal of completion by March next year.

The bustling Hongdae street in Mapo-gu ahead of Halloween Day.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

The city stated that this project was initiated to establish quantified crowd safety management standards through big data analysis and to formulate a mid- to long-term crowd safety management plan based on these standards.

Using accumulated data from October 2022 to October 2025, the project will analyze and compare the annual usual resident and floating population and the population density changes during major events such as local festivals across the entire Seoul area. It will also display the degree of crowd density and risk, derived from analyzing big data on transportation, communication, and geographic information throughout the city, in an easily understandable manner.

Additionally, various factors influencing crowd safety accidents will be analyzed and presented as quantified indicators in the form of a crowd density safety index. A standardized method will also be developed to define various 'risk levels' of vulnerable areas to crowd safety accidents and to predict the risk of such accidents.

Through the standardization of the crowd density safety index and crowd safety accident risk levels, once the crowd safety index can be derived, it is explained that the expected crowd density areas for the upcoming year will be presented, and risk zones will be selected and marked on the crowd density map according to pedestrian volume, pedestrian flow, and characteristics of surrounding spaces.

Furthermore, the city plans to establish the 'Seoul City Crowd Safety Management Basic Plan' through analysis of crowd safety management policies, institutional trends, and best practices.

The city expects to move away from relying on the subjective and experiential capabilities of safety managers and instead prepare crowd safety management plans and response guidelines based on standardized quantitative criteria.

Kim Seong-bo, Director of the Seoul Disaster and Safety Management Office, said, "We will create a crowd density map of Seoul and develop a quantified safety index to establish a prevention-centered foundation for crowd safety management." He added, "Starting with this project, we will do our best to create a safe Seoul where citizens can feel secure anytime and anywhere by establishing scientific and systematic safety measures and standards for crowd safety accidents."