Crowd Modeling Based Auto Activated Barriers for Management of Pilgrims in Mataf

Tens of millions of people visit every year the Grand Mosque in Makkah for Hajj and Umrah. Making Tawaf (circumambulating the Ka’ba) is an essential rite in Hajj and Umrah. During peak hours, crowd density in Mataf (the area around the Ka’ba) becomes extremely intense. Even when the crowd density in Mataf is less, kissing the Black Stone (a part of the ritual of making the Tawaf) is a daunting task. This is due to the lack of proper queueing of pilgrims wishing to touch and kiss the Black Stone. In this work, we propose a Finite State Machine (FSM) based model for simulating the crowd movement during Tawaf. The model can be implemented in real time crowd monitoring in Mataf. Based on the models outputs, a system for auto-activated barriers is proposed to arrange the pilgrims in queue who want to touch and kiss the Black Stone.