Anti Crush Safety Barriers for Music Festivals.

The safety of everyone on a music festival site is a high priority for organisers with an increased focus on crowd crush prevention planning. What do festival organisers need to consider when planning and building their festival sites to ensure that thousands of festival-goers in a small space will remain safe and secure during live performances.

The most prominent use of anti-crush barriers (crowd control barriers) on a music festival site is generally in front of stages and helps prevent dangerous crowd pressure. Their purpose is to protect festival-goers near stages and provide a safe working area for security, medical and production staff. The physical design of these barriers is changing with more scientifically based features that are intended to retain structural integrity whilst reducing pressure points from crowd surges. How can organisers plan and implement the latest anti-crush barrier designs in line with overall crowd safety in mind.

Festival Goer Safety as a Priority.
There have been too many instances in recent years of festival-goers getting injured or worse because of crowd surges resulting in significant horizontal forces. Large crowd surges can lead to compression asphyxia, falls, trampling incidents and other audience injuries. It is key that organisers of events with large numbers of festival-goers in front of stages fully understand how previous tragedies occurred so they can prevent similar incidents. During the planning phase organisers must identify crowd surge risks which are particularly prevalent during popular headliner performances, high energy genres and combined with poor crowd control at entrances for example.

Designing Safe Environments.
The site design during the planning phase of any music festival must take account of numerous factors that can impact crowd control management. This is often a combination of expected audience numbers against known capacity along with artist popularity and audience demographics. The more energetic the genre of music, the higher the risk with rock music being one of the highest risks for crowd control issues. Sites should be designed to avoid crowd zones being located on ground that slopes towards stages or that are prone to becoming muddy and slippy. Site design should incorporate good crowd management principles to avoid bottlenecks and narrowing crowd flow zones. In some instances, it may be prudent to incorporate multiple barrier lines as a backup should the first barrier fail. The stage audience zone should be designed to reduce overall crowd pressure, improve control by staff, and facilitate easy emergency access.

Anti-Crush Safety Barrier Features.
Modern anti-crush barriers are designed to be constructed from load bearing materials and are engineered to withstand substantial crowd loads whist maintaining structural integrity. In some instances, barriers may be engineered to break at intentional pressure thresholds to prevent fatal crowd crushes where the failure is a controlled safety release. New designs incorporate anticipated crowd behaviour based on extensive studies and barrier systems now include curved or angled sections that help distribute crowd pressure away from the centre stage area. Other design features include no climb surfaces and the incorporation of smart load sensing linked to crowd safety monitoring tools like real time predictive crowd analysis systems. It is essential that the pit lane between crowd barriers and stages is maintained at all times to allow security personnel and medical response teams to operate freely. These zones also allow for the extraction of distressed festival-goers and the distribution of water, for example.

Festival Site Crush Prevention Planning.
With good planning, organisers should have the processes, procedures and tools in place to predict dangerous crowd conditions before crowd pressure reaches critical levels. This allows staff to intervene early rather than having to react to an incident after it develops. Aside from the use of well-designed anti-crush barriers, organisers should be integrating their use with overall crowd management principles. Real-time crowd monitoring using CCTV analytics and density measurement help to identify potential incidents before they develop. The use of crowd control technology should work in tandem with well-trained security staff and medical response teams so that everyone understands medical extraction procedures and emergency response protocols. It is also essential to ensure that the expected festival-goer numbers are accurately forecast to avoid unexpected large crowd surges.

For festival organisers planning their next event using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, site planning, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Image by Noland Live via Pexels

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