Understanding the difference in social group behaviour of a spiritually motivated crowd and a general crowd

Over time, numerous studies have been conducted on pedestrian behaviour to improve the fidelity of pedestrian models considering pedestrians as individual entities. The participation of social groups is much higher than individuals in mass religious gatherings, which calls for studies focusing on understanding group behaviour in a crowd. Data was collected at two different settings (a) in Kumbh Mela 2016 representing mass religious gatherings and (b) Open day event held at Indian Institute of Science campus representing a regular urban setting. Trajectories of groups were extracted, and spatial formation of different group sizes were plotted. It was observed that group size 3 formed a linear or V-pattern and groups size 4 and 5 formed asymmetric irregular polygons. The area occupancy of groups and their average walking speeds were also calculated for both datasets, and it was observed that despite Kumbh Mela groups occupying lesser area, the average walking speed is higher than the groups in Open day. Looking at these group behaviour characteristics, this paper tries to uncover how group behaviour in mass religious gatherings is different from a low or moderate density setting and whether or not, there is a need for separate walking behaviour parameters.