Wisconsin's Camp Randall Stadium

What sports fan hasn't grumbled while waiting in a long, snaking lines to get into the stadium for the big game? It's enough to discourage even a diehard fan. But if you think it's a hassle getting into a sold-out game, imagine trying to get out after a bomb explodes -- or even to get out under a bomb threat, for that matter.

Let's start with the emergency lights failing. If you're thinking of feeling your way out by the light of your cell phone, join the crowd -- they're right beside you, pushing fifty-across and a thousand-deep in a stampede. It's everyone for himself.

Scenes like this may sound like a trailer for a Hollywood thriller (think Black Sunday), but their grim prospect is all-too-real. Last year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI jointly warned of terrorist interest in attacking crowded stadiums. Small wonder: A bomb or noxious plume released over a throng of captive sports fans would cause major-league mayhem and terror.
Mindful of the threat, stadium sentinels have been laying plans to manage and minimize the anarchy that would follow such an attack. Just how would authorities whisk 70,000 people out the gates and onto the roads quickly and safely? For an evacuation on this scale, there are no dress rehearsals or practice drills -- just simulation software.

Now, a new breed of simulation software -- dubbed SportEvac -- is being funded by the DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) as part of the Southeast Region Research Initiative (SERRI), and developed and tested by the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety & Security (NCS4) at the University of Southern Mississippi.

"SportEvac isn't simply more realistic," says program manager Mike Matthews of S&T's Infrastructure and Geophysical Division. It will become a national standard."

Using blueprints from actual stadiums, the developers are creating virtual, 3D e stadiums, packed with as many as 70,000 avatars -- animated human agents programmed to respond to threats as unpredictably as humans. Security planners will be able to see how 70,000 fans would behave―and misbehave―when spooked by a security threat.

But a SportEvac avatar need not be a sports fan. The simulation includes make-believe stadium workers, first responders, even objects, such as a fire trucks or a fan's car. SportEvac tracks them all, accounting for scenarios both probable and improbable.

Simulating thousands of people and cars can impose a crushing load on software and hardware. That's why, unlike SportEvac, most evacuation software apps are unable to simulate a crowd much larger than 5,000. For a college or NFL football game, that's bush-league.

(Credit: SERRI)

Beyond scaling problems, earlier simulators did not account for the myriad variations that make human behavior hard to predict and human structures hard to simulate. How adversely, for example, would an evacuation be impaired if an audible were called -- a wet floor, a wheelchair, a stubborn aisle-seater, a fan fetching a forgotten bag, or an inebriated bleacher bum?

Conventional evacuation simulators couldn't say. SportEvac can. And like an open-source Web browser, the SportEvac software will get better and better because it's built on open, modular code. If your IT intern creates a module that can more accurately predict parking lot gridlock, just plug it in. This also means it can be customized for any sports arena.

By simulating how sports fans would behave in the minutes following an attack, SportEvac will help security experts across the country to plan and train and answer key questions, such as:

How can my stadium be evacuated in the shortest time?
How can civil emergency workers quickly get in as fans are dashing out?
How can our stadium guards and ushers provide valuable information to civil responders and assist them as the evacuation unfolds?

"Interoperability is also a key goal," says Lou Marciani, NCS4 Director, who serves as the S&T project's principal investigator. Stadium security officers can use SportEvac to rehearse and refine procedures with civil responders. During a real evacuation, guards might use the same radios as the civil responders. And for every usher with a smartphone, a "SportEvac Lite" application will graphically show where fans or cars are bottlenecked.

Drawing on actual architectural CAD data, the Mississippi researchers are creating 3D virtual models of seven of the state's college sports stadiums. This year, in summits and workshops, security teams from the university athletic departments will test and refine SportEvac, with help from local police, Mississippi Homeland Security agents, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, and security specialists from pro sports. It will then be deployed to the seven state universities. Once the schools give it the green light, S&T will make the advanced version available to other universities, pro sports venues, and amateur sports organizations.

While not quite as immersive as the recent 3-D movie Avatar, SportEvac will create a safe, virtual stadium where security teams can practice guiding fans to safety, without risking life, limb, or lawsuit.

Source: US Department of Homeland Security - Science and Technology

See also: Designing The Connected Stadium 2.0 and The Cognitive Benefits Of Being A Sports Fan

Whether you are watching your favorite team play from your home, at the sports bar or among 50,000 screaming fans at the stadium, each environment will give you a different experience. Researchers at the University of Glasgow are working on ways to connect those three different environments of fans and customize the use of technology within each setting.

"People watching at home don't feel part of the game, but have the advantage of being able to choose services such as viewing footage from different camera angles or even catching up on a different game," said project leader Matthew Chalmers. "We are exploring how to let people interact at a game, such as by sharing video clips, pictures, or even footage of their favorite goals using something like a Bluetooth network."

Chalmers and his team are partnering with Microsoft's Socio-Digital Systems research group in Cambridge and Arup, a global developer of sports venues including the Beijing National Stadium, to develop the "augmented stadium" which will combine the use of mobile technology with the fan experience.

To understand how spectators interact with the game, the researchers will first observe and record fans, looking for opportunities where technology could enhance the experience. Combining sociology of sport concepts with crowd interaction research, the team hopes to discover the patterns of communication that may be possible. Designing for "crowd-centric computing" includes not only the experience of each fan, but also the experience of the crowd as a whole. Fan to fan, fan to crowd and fan to team communications could all be enhanced with the right technology.

In addition to crowd interaction, the connection to friends not at the stadium is also part of the design.
"We are thinking of supporting the 'man down' scenario where a member of a social group can't make it to a big match," Chalmers told me in a recent interview. "He/she might be watching the same match at the pub or at home, or may just be unable to watch it at all... but in either case still wanting to keep in touch with the banter of his/her friends."

Cisco Systems has also made the connected stadium a goal for the future. They have combined their strength in networking with the type of social research that the Glasgow researchers are discovering to enhance the fan experience. See their vision of the future in this History Channel - Modern Marvels video.

Applications like Major League Baseball's At Bat 2009, an iPhone/iPod app that will include in-game video and audio along with updated stats, scores and news, are the first step towards live interactive information.

Chalmers considers those applications as complementary to his research. "I see them as 'more of the same' in that they are examples of the traditional norm of 'official' content providers distributing their information their way. That's fine, and I'm glad if that information is made available in a mobile way," he said. "The crowd interaction features are the difference."

In an interview with The Scotsman, Stuart Reeves, another researcher on the Glasgow team, explained: "The idea is to give some power back to sports fans, so they can share information and make their own record and analysis of matches and get more out of the experience. We will then use this information to design data-sharing applications which enable photo-sharing and blogging in real time, using Wi-Fi, GPS and 3G technology."

Of course, trying to connect thousands of mobile device users in a small geographic space, like a stadium, presents a technical challenge. While some of the team's prototype applications have relied on 3G or Wi-Fi technology, Chalmers is also considering the concept of mobile ad-hoc networks, or MANETs.

These networks rely on each wireless device to be a receiver and a router, so that a network can be instantly built between devices without the support of a central infrastructure. "This will allow fans to make use of their own commodity phones to have a kind of independent communication infrastructure to do their own thing on -- and avoid many of the problems of limited bandwidth provided locally and commercially," Chalmers said. "They can use that infrastructure in the stadium, but also have it with them outside of the event in the pub/street/wherever."

Please visit my other sports science articles at LiveScience.com