Preventing Tragedies Through Crowd Control: “JingLvTong” Promotes Free Crowd Management Mechanisms

As the festive atmosphere grows stronger, travelers are making plans to reunite with family and share the year’s achievements and joys. However, the 36 lives lost in the Shanghai Bund stampede, along with their families, will never have the chance to gather again. On December 31, 2014, less than 40 minutes before the arrival of 2015, the Chen Yi Square in Shanghai’s Bund experienced an extremely tragic overcrowding and stampede incident due to an excessive influx of people, where 36 precious lives were lost in an instant. At the turn of the year, we must reflect deeply—how can crowd control in scenic areas be made more effective, and how can we scientifically prevent such stampede incidents?

In fact, in densely populated China, holidays are especially precious for most people, who wish to use this brief time to visit attractions they rarely get to see. As a result, it is particularly common for scenic areas to experience sudden surges in visitor numbers that far exceed their capacity. It is no longer rare to see news reports about popular scenic spots becoming overcrowded during golden weeks.

Previously, to prevent stampede incidents, scenic areas mainly relied on methods such as estimating daily visitor numbers, ticket sales, and management patrols for crowd control. These traditional approaches are labor-intensive, inefficient, and only suitable for closed (turnstile-access) scenic areas. For fully open areas like Shanghai’s Bund, ordinary manpower is simply incapable of managing crowds. This tragedy has served as a wake-up call for the industry—the adoption of smarter, information-based monitoring systems for real-time crowd surveillance and early warnings is now urgently needed.

It is reported that to address the challenges of scenic area crowd monitoring, “JingLvTong,” a smart tourism sub-brand under the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, has taken the lead in investing significant resources in China to develop the “JingLvTong Smart Management Platform.” This platform helps domestic tourist attractions establish robust crowd control mechanisms, disseminate real-time traffic information, and guide visitors to travel more rationally.

The “JingLvTong Smart Management Platform” is a data supervision system built using computer technology, information technology, electronics, big data analysis, and other advanced technologies. By integrating with scenic areas’ electronic ticketing systems, it enables real-time management of scenic data, allowing operators to view accurate reports on ticket sales, visitor numbers, and visitor origin distribution. It is a powerful tool for monitoring crowd flow in scenic areas.

According to insiders, JingLvTong has already begun in-depth technical work on crowd control. The next step will focus on upgrading the monitoring system to not only provide visualized data but also offer real-time remote satellite imagery of crowd conditions in scenic areas. This will allow management personnel to more intuitively and clearly observe crowd situations, helping them quickly devise evacuation and guidance strategies. Industry insiders predict that, given JingLvTong’s breakthroughs in crowd control, the system may become a standard feature in domestic scenic areas.

In addition to real-time monitoring of daily visitor entries at scenic sites and destinations, enabling intelligent crowd management and emergency response, the “JingLvTong Smart Management Platform” also provides a reporting and statistics system. This system analyzes all sales and crowd data from scenic areas and generates corresponding reports. It also facilitates the issuance of multi-scenic-area joint tickets via the smart platform, meeting tourists’ needs to visit multiple sites, increasing regional product sales, enhancing the overall competitiveness of destinations, boosting local tourism economies, and promoting synchronized development across various types of attractions.

Notably, this advanced “JingLvTong Smart Management Platform” will be provided free of charge to major scenic areas across China. To date, nearly 10 national AAAA-level scenic spots have signed cooperation agreements with JingLvTong and are implementing the platform. Among them, the smart management platform system at Shepan Island in Taizhou, Zhejiang, has been fully established and is now operational. The successful implementation of this project has brought comprehensive value enhancement to Shepan Island, not only controlling and monitoring visitor flow but also attracting more tourists through improved service quality, leading to greater profits. Additionally, Yaowan Ancient Town in Jiangsu has also begun platform implementation, with completion scheduled within this year.

Experts point out that the lack of civic rule awareness and inadequate public service facilities in domestic tourist attractions stand in stark contrast to the ever-growing volume of tourism. On one hand, scenic areas desire increased visitor numbers, yet on the other, necessary infrastructure improvements have not kept pace. The launch and implementation of the “JingLvTong Smart Management Platform” sets a benchmark for smart tourism in China. By monitoring crowd flow, it not only prevents overcrowding that exceeds a scenic area’s capacity, but also uses big data to guide analysis of visitor trends, enabling precise responses for different periods, weather conditions, and visitor types. With these precise measures in place, scenic areas can enhance public facilities according to visitor profiles, delivering higher-quality services, improving the scenic image, and ensuring steady, sustainable growth in tourist numbers.