Indian police have installed 300 cameras to collect images and feed them into AI algorithms to provide to the processing team to prevent stampedes at the Kumbh Mela pilgrimage festival.
Crowds of pilgrims at this year’s Kumbh Mela festival. Image: AFP
Festival organizers predict that 400 million pilgrims will participate in the Hindu Kumbh Mela festival with a sacred river bathing ritual starting on Monday and lasting 6 weeks (from January 13 to February 26). Deadly clashes in crowds are common at India’s religious festivals and the Kumbh Mela is famous for its dark history of stampedes, according to AFP. At this festival, authorities said the technology they deployed will help collect accurate estimates of crowd size, contributing to better preparation for potential trouble.
“We want everyone to go home happy after fulfilling their spiritual responsibilities,” said Amit Kumar, senior police officer who directs technological activities at the festival. “AI helps us avoid critical crowds in sensitive places.”
Indian police said they had installed about 300 cameras at the festival site and on roads leading to the sprawling campsite, placed on electricity poles and overhead drone clusters. Not far from the center of the festival at the junction of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, a network of cameras is monitored in a command and control room by a team of police and technicians. “We could observe the entire Kumbh Mela festival from here. There were many camera angles where we couldn’t see the whole body and had to count the number of heads and bodies,” Kumar said.
According to Kumar, the images fed into the AI algorithm help provide the processing team with estimates of crowds stretching for kilometers in all directions, cross-checked with data from railways and bus operators. The system will warn if certain sections of the crowd are so dense that they threaten safety.
The organizers said the scale of this year’s Kumbh Mela festival is equivalent to a temporary country with the number of participants expected to be equal to the combined population of the US and Canada. About 6 million people will bathe in the river on the first morning of the festival, according to estimates from authorities. With such a crowded nature, jostling in the crowd is inevitable. The threshold at which the crowd control system alarms is several times higher than in countries using similar systems. “Equipping cameras and drones makes us feel safe,” said 28-year-old engineer Harshit Joshi, one of millions of pilgrims to the festival.