Ujjain : Simhastha Fair-2016 even before its inauguration has become heaven spot for researchers from across the world. On Thursday team of researchers from Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and St Petersburg University, Russia visited the city for initiating the research work on all around management of the Simhastha fair. However the scientists and research fellows had to wait around for two hours at the Mangalnath zone where, as Divisional Commissioner (DC) Ravindra Pastor was holding a stand up meeting of the officials. The scientists were roaming outside the zone office wasting their precious time of physical visit, while the officials were busy in the meeting. They were called by DC Pastor after the meeting ended and they introduced themselves to the DC, with their purpose.
The whole research has been jointly funded by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY), NWO, and private companies such as Tech Mahindra. Dr Ashish Verma, from IISC, who is also the chief investigator of the project, explained about the research purposes to the DC. Principal Investigator Dr Peter Sloot, Dr Michael Lees, Emiliano Mancini all from university of Amsterdam, Netherlands are also the part of the research, also Dr Alexander V Boukhanovsky from ITMO University, St Petersburg, Russia is aiding in the research. All the guests from abroad were escorted by Senior Policy Advisor, Netherland embassy, Vikas Kohli, who had vital role in engaging the research.
The scientists were made aware of the Simhastha fair preparations by DC Pastor, later the team headed for the physical inspection and presentation at the Simhastha Fair office. A meeting of project team and deputy fair officers Sujan Rawat and Abhishek Dubey was held till evening. Dr Verma showed about their researches on crowd management at Bengaluru, though videos. The researchers from Netherland presented simulation videos of crowd management at stadiums and coronation ceremonies of King. The team will collect data from the various resources including digital, analog, indexed, non-indexed and hand written data for making the Smart one. However the research would be little use in present as they will take inputs from the fair and will use it for further predictions.
Research objectives?
Director Deity Tulika Pandey told Free Press that the joint research of global level is bigger aspects, although the present research will not aid the upcoming Simhastha Fair directly but the inputs and outcome of world’s biggest religious congregation will help developing smart solution for humanity. Principal investigator Dr Ashish Verma said our only aim to gather data in all formats and put it to use for smart crowd management. Technologies including Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT), simulation techniques, and decision making algorithms will be used for an efficient crowd management techniques for mass gathering events. Giving an example he said similar techniques were used in Nashik Kumbh and the researchers using the data were able to predict accurate number of patients at a certain hospital. Dr Peter Sloot told Free Press that they have been researching similar events of mass gathering all around the world such as football matches, which are craze in their country and Simhastha will be a great experimental venue for them. Vikas Kohli jointly funded and will open new paths of event management on such a large scale using the technical advancements. Total cost of the project is about Rs 4 crore, to be provided by all the aforesaid institutes.
Source : Free Press
