With the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continuing to spread around the globe, there is an unprecedented need to develop different approaches to containing the pandemic from spreading further. One particular case of importance is mass-gathering events. Mass-gathering events have been shown to exhibit the possibility to be superspreader events; as such, the adoption of effective control strategies by policymakers is essential to curb the spread of the pandemic. This paper deals with modeling the possible spread of COVID-19 in the Hajj, the world’s largest religious gathering. We present an agent-based model (ABM) for two rituals of the Hajj: Tawaf and Ramy al-Jamarat. The model aims to investigate the effect of two control measures: buffers and face masks. We couple these control measures with a third control measure that can be adopted by policymakers, which is limiting the capacity of each ritual. Our findings show the impact of each control measure on the curbing of the spread of COVID-19 under the different crowd dynamics induced by the constraints of each ritual.

Crowd management is a flourishing, active research area and must be given attention due to the potential losses, disasters, and accidents that could occur if it were neglected. For the last decade, the crowd management field has witnessed significant advancements; however, more investigative work is still needed. The integration of different crowd detection and monitoring techniques can enhance the control and the performance compared to those of more limited stand-alone techniques. Crowd management encompasses an entire process, from the monitoring stage through the decision support system stage. This sector involves accessing and interpreting information sources, predicting crowd behavior, and deciding on the use of a range of possible interventions based on context. This paper shows a fresh conclusive review of the concept of the crowd, discussing it from several perspectives in light of its defining characteristics, its risks, and tragedies, which may occur due to challenges faced during crowd management, where these conclusions are based on a massive number of scholarly articles that were newly published. Besides, a systematic discussion is shown concerning the steps of managing a crowd, including crowd detection, in which several new methods are reviewed, followed by illustrating both direct and indirect approaches to crowd monitoring and tracking monitoring. The primary purpose of this review is to establish a comprehensive understanding of crowdrelated processes. Moreover, it aims to find research gaps to overcome the limitations of using stand-alone techniques in each process and provide support to other researchers' future work.

Annually, a huge number of pilgrims visit Mecca to perform Al Hajj ritual. Crowd management is critical in this occasion in order to avoid crowd disasters (e.g., stampede and suffocation). Recent studies stated that various factors, such as the environment, fatigue level, health condition and emotional status have a significant effect on crowded events. This calls for a need for an automated data analytics system that feeds event organizers with information about those factors on real-time, at least from a generalizable sample of crowd subjects, in which proactive crowd management decisions are made to reduce overall risks. This paper develops a novel methodology that fuses mobile GPS and physiological data of Hajj pilgrims collected through wearable sensors to train three classification models: (a) current performed Hajj activity, (b) fatigue level, and (c) emotional level. In a pilot experiment conducted against two subjects, promising results of a minimum of 75% accuracy levels were achieved for the activity recognition and fatigue level classifiers, whereas the emotional level classifier still requires further refinements.

Logging is an important process in databases and

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