This article is published in the Case Study category.

The one just passed has been one memorable weekend in Singapore. The tiny city-state in South East Asia is one of the well known countries for quality of services offered, world-class events and unforgettable experience: the F1 weekend at Marina Bay Street Circuit is no less than all this.

Among the enthusiastic spectators, DFRC team was on site to run LBASense system for event monitoring. In particular, the passive short-range sensors were installed just outside the F1 park and at two of the main grandstands, to enable the understanding of mobility patterns.

For most event organisers, in fact, it’s essential to learn how people enter the event area, whether they move around or spend time in a specific locations, and in such case how long they stay. All these pieces of information build a bigger picture that helps event and venue managers better design the next happening: for instance, creating new gates and alternative ways of moving, increasing or relocating the fan-zones, modifying the food stalls layout.

During the F1 long weekend, besides the race itself, there are tons of side events that attract an impressive number of people from all over the world. With the LBASense system we tried to analyse spectators’ flow and here follow some examples of our findings.

Before the drivers parade prior to the Grand Prix, on Sunday, people rushed to take their seat at the grandstands in front of the bay in almost half an hour: despite the motto “sit back and relax”, spectators gathered as close as possible to the track, without leaving the grandstand, to take the best shot of drivers running around on vintage cars.