In Korea, crowd accidents continue to occur intermittently. There have been 6 crowd accidents in Seoul over the past 60 years. In October 2022, a Halloween crowd led to a stampede in Itaewon, Seoul, killing 159 people. The disaster was characterized by a large crowd, unlike a typical crowd accident where the organizer was identified. There are areas in Seoul that are vulnerable to such situations, and measures need to be taken to avoid such occurrences.

Overseas countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and India are implementing crowd safety management that emphasizes prevention and preparedness through regional-level analysis. Those countries provide guidance on assessing risks and vulnerabilities at or around the event site and making plans to respond to emergencies.

We reviewed raw data on the characteristics of crowd inflow, such as living population, alleys, crowd density, tourism attractions, frequent event areas, and prosperous commercial districts, and constructed spatial data. Spatial data was divided into three categories: basic data, risk, and response vulnerability which consisted of seven indicators, and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) weights were obtained through an expert survey on categories and indicators. In the category, the risk was highest at 0.584, and in the indicator, the floating population area was highest at 0.315. We created an overlapping map by applying the weights to the indicators and derived the areas vulnerable to mass gatherings in Seoul accordingly. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the areas vulnerable to mass gatherings in Seoul account for 13.6% of the entire city of Seoul.

Based on the above findings, a field survey was conducted, and five streets were categorized. We simulated crowding in representative regions among the 5 types. We found that the walking obstacles according to the walking speed were different for each type of street, thus safety management guidelines should be created to reflect this.

We surveyed 1,000 citizens regarding their awareness of crowd accidents. Among Seoul citizens surveyed, 75.4% of the respondents knew about crowd accidents, 47.6% had experienced situations where crowd accidents were a concern, and 79.2% cited festivals, events, and rallies as places of concern. Among the surveyed, in the question about responsibility for crowd accidents in mass gatherings, 32.6% chose the local government and 30.96% chose themselves. According to the results on related measures, they would like to request from the Seoul Metropolitan Government, It was found that they preferred crowd accident preventive measures at the local level. We conducted a status review, spatial analysis, field survey, crowd simulation, and citizen awareness survey, and based on this, we attempted to establish a crowd safety management plan suitable for the Seoul Metropolitan Government.

Our attempt led to the following conclusions:

ⅰ) Promoting crowd accident prevention that reflects the characteristics of areas vulnerable to mass gathering
ⅱ) Strengthening the cooperation system to prepare for crowd accidents
ⅲ) Vulnerability management and extensive application