Journals Proceedings

Abstract

Number of visitors to Saudi Arabia for performing hajj and umrah from around the world is increasing day by day. Hence the visitors of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW)’s mosque in Madina Munawara, Saudi Arabia are also increasing every year. During Eid days, month of Ramadan and at Friday prayers, thousands of people visits the Prophet’s mosque. One of the ritual is to visit the Prophet’s grave (Ziara Place). Every visitor want to come to the ziara place and want to spend as much time as they can near the ziara place. This kind of behavior creates bottleneck at the entrance and also at the grave’s spot. Analysis and simulation of crowd flow in the mosque is very important for better crowd management, safety and comfort of the visitors. In this paper, we have focused on the ziara place in the mosque where maximum congestion of people occurs. Better crowd management must take into consideration including time response in case of hazardous conditions, waiting time, avoiding barriers, facility management, size, and queuing etc. Crowd simulation and analysis is necessary to avoid the risks of people collisions, and longer waiting time in this area. Visitors (pedestrians) behaviors, crowd densities, and crowd flow in the Prophet’s grave is analyzed in this paper for different crowd densities