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• Versichele, M
• Neutens, T
• Goudeseune, S
• van Bossche, F
• Van de Weghe, N
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• Versichele, M
• Neutens, T
• Goudeseune, S
• van Bossche, F
• Van de Weghe, N
• [+] on PubMed
• Versichele, M
• Neutens, T
• Goudeseune, S
• van Bossche, F
• Van de Weghe, N

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Sensors 2012, 12(10), 14196-14213; doi:10.3390/s121014196

Article

Mobile Mapping of Sporting Event Spectators Using Bluetooth Sensors: Tour of Flanders 2011

Mathias Versichele* , Tijs Neutens, Stephanie Goudeseune, Frederik van Bossche and Nico Van de Weghe

Department of Geography, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281, S8, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received: 22 May 2012; in revised form: 17 October 2012 / Accepted: 18 October 2012 / Published: 22 October 2012

(This article belongs to the Section Remote Sensors)

Download PDF Full-Text [706 KB, uploaded 22 October 2012 14:44 CEST]

Abstract: Accurate spatiotemporal information on crowds is a necessity for a better management in general and for the mitigation of potential security risks. The large numbers of individuals involved and their mobility, however, make generation of this information non-trivial. This paper proposes a novel methodology to estimate and map crowd sizes using mobile Bluetooth sensors and examines to what extent this methodology represents a valuable alternative to existing traditional crowd density estimation methods. The proposed methodology is applied in a unique case study that uses Bluetooth technology for the mobile mapping of spectators of the Tour of Flanders 2011 road cycling race. The locations of nearly 16,000 cell phones of spectators along the race course were registered and detailed views of the spatiotemporal distribution of the crowd were generated. Comparison with visual head counts from camera footage delivered a detection ratio of 13.0 ± 2.3%, making it possible to estimate the crowd size. To our knowledge, this is the first study that uses mobile Bluetooth sensors to count and map a crowd over space and time.

Keywords: Bluetooth tracking; mobile sensors; mobile mapping; crowd counting; crowd mapping

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