How do you quickly evacuate 70,000 sports fans from a stadium attacked by terrorists?

for scenarios both probable and improbable.

Simulating thousands of people and cars can impose a crushing load on software and hardware. This is why, unlike SportEvac, most evacuation software applications are unable to simulate a crowd much larger than 5,000. For a college or NFL football game, this is not enough.

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 spectator?

Conventional evacuation simulators could not say. SportEvac can. As an open-source Web browser, the SportEvac software will get better and better because it is 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 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. 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.

DHS says that 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.