WEBVTT

00:00:00.691 --> 00:00:01.969
I was only nine

00:00:01.993 --> 00:00:04.333
when my grandfather first described to me

00:00:04.357 --> 00:00:06.916
the horrors he witnessed six years earlier

00:00:06.940 --> 00:00:09.844
when human stampedes killed 39 people

00:00:09.868 --> 00:00:11.884
in our hometown of Nashik, India.

00:00:12.461 --> 00:00:15.750
It was during the 2003 Nashik Kumbh Mela,

00:00:15.774 --> 00:00:18.746
one of the world's largest
religious gatherings.

00:00:19.213 --> 00:00:22.943
Every 12 years, over 30 million
Hindu worshippers

00:00:22.967 --> 00:00:24.546
descend upon our city,

00:00:24.570 --> 00:00:27.410
which is built only
for 1.5 million people,

00:00:27.434 --> 00:00:29.077
and stay for 45 days.

00:00:29.601 --> 00:00:32.672
The main purpose is
to wash away all their sins

00:00:32.696 --> 00:00:35.783
to bathing in the river Godavari,

00:00:35.807 --> 00:00:38.045
and stampedes can easily happen

00:00:38.069 --> 00:00:41.346
because a high-density crowd
moves at a slow pace.

00:00:42.002 --> 00:00:46.311
Apart from Nashik, this event happens
in three other places in India

00:00:46.335 --> 00:00:48.054
with varying frequency,

00:00:48.078 --> 00:00:50.847
and between 2001 and 2014,

00:00:50.871 --> 00:00:54.663
over 2,400 lives have been lost

00:00:54.687 --> 00:00:56.369
in stampedes at these events.

00:00:57.362 --> 00:00:59.219
What saddened me the most

00:00:59.243 --> 00:01:03.758
is seeing people around me
resigning to the city's fate

00:01:03.782 --> 00:01:07.607
in witnessing the seemingly
inevitable deaths of dozens

00:01:07.631 --> 00:01:08.908
at every Kumbh Mela.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:09.448 --> 00:01:10.878
I sought to change this,

00:01:10.902 --> 00:01:13.877
and I thought, why can't I try
to find a solution to this?

00:01:13.901 --> 00:01:15.389
Because I knew it is wrong.

00:01:15.701 --> 00:01:17.464
Having learned coding at an early age

00:01:17.488 --> 00:01:19.153
and being a maker,

00:01:19.177 --> 00:01:21.019
I considered the wild idea.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:21.043 --> 00:01:23.466
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:23.490 --> 00:01:26.554
I considered the wild idea
of building a system

00:01:26.578 --> 00:01:29.039
that would help regulate
the flow of people

00:01:29.063 --> 00:01:32.054
and use it in the next Kumbh Mela in 2015,

00:01:32.078 --> 00:01:33.835
to have fewer stampedes

00:01:33.859 --> 00:01:35.683
and hopefully fewer deaths.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:36.177 --> 00:01:38.648
It seemed like a mission impossible,

00:01:38.672 --> 00:01:40.440
a dream too big,

00:01:40.464 --> 00:01:42.645
especially for a 15-year old,

00:01:42.669 --> 00:01:44.721
yet that dream came through in 2015,

00:01:44.745 --> 00:01:49.925
when not only did we succeed

00:01:49.949 --> 00:01:52.901
in reducing the stampedes
and their intensity,

00:01:52.925 --> 00:01:55.102
but we marked 2015

00:01:55.126 --> 00:01:57.071
as the first Nashik Kumbh Mela

00:01:57.095 --> 00:01:59.133
to have zero stampedes.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:59.596 --> 00:02:04.934
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:04.958 --> 00:02:07.444
It was the first time in recorded history

00:02:07.468 --> 00:02:10.214
that this event passed
without any casualties.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:10.888 --> 00:02:12.038
How did we do it?

00:02:12.623 --> 00:02:15.654
It all started when I joined
an innovation workshop

00:02:15.678 --> 00:02:18.354
by MIT Media Lab in 2014

00:02:18.378 --> 00:02:20.347
called the Kumbhathon

00:02:20.371 --> 00:02:24.775
that aimed at solving challenging
faced at the grand scale of Kumbh Mela.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:25.784 --> 00:02:30.292
Now, we figured out to solve
the stampede problem,

00:02:30.316 --> 00:02:32.480
we wanted to know only three things:

00:02:32.504 --> 00:02:35.243
the number of people, the location,

00:02:35.267 --> 00:02:38.726
and the rate of people per minute.

00:02:39.241 --> 00:02:43.370
So we started to look for technologies
that would help us get these three things.

00:02:44.091 --> 00:02:46.717
Can we distribute radio frequency tokens

00:02:46.741 --> 00:02:48.345
to identify people?

00:02:48.369 --> 00:02:51.782
We figured out that it would
be too expensive and impractical

00:02:51.806 --> 00:02:53.742
to distribute 30 million tags.

00:02:54.545 --> 00:02:57.926
Can you use CCTV cameras
with image-processing techniques?

00:02:57.950 --> 00:02:59.997
Again, too expensive for that scale,

00:03:00.021 --> 00:03:02.899
along with the disadvantages
of being non-portable

00:03:02.923 --> 00:03:04.577
and being completely useless

00:03:04.601 --> 00:03:05.741
in the case of rain,

00:03:05.765 --> 00:03:08.147
which is a common thing
to happen in Kumbh Mela.

00:03:09.120 --> 00:03:11.445
Can we use cell phone tower data?

00:03:11.806 --> 00:03:14.273
It sounds like the perfect solution,

00:03:14.297 --> 00:03:16.070
but the funny part is,

00:03:16.094 --> 00:03:18.839
most of the people
do not carry cell phones

00:03:18.863 --> 00:03:20.347
in events like Kumbh Mela.

00:03:20.887 --> 00:03:24.601
Also, the data wouldn't have been
granular enough for us.

00:03:24.625 --> 00:03:27.078
So we wanted something that was real-time,

00:03:27.102 --> 00:03:30.419
low-cost, sturdy and waterproof,

00:03:30.443 --> 00:03:32.814
and it was easy to get
the data for processing.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:33.672 --> 00:03:36.028
So we built Ashioto,

00:03:36.052 --> 00:03:38.192
meaning "footstep" in Japanese,

00:03:38.216 --> 00:03:40.560
as it consists of a portable mat

00:03:40.584 --> 00:03:42.346
which has pressure sensors

00:03:42.370 --> 00:03:44.861
which can count the number
of people walking on it

00:03:44.885 --> 00:03:47.317
and sends the data over the internet

00:03:47.341 --> 00:03:49.888
to the advance data analysis
software we created.

00:03:50.483 --> 00:03:53.771
The possible errors,
like overcounting or double-stepping,

00:03:53.795 --> 00:03:56.445
were overcome using design interventions.

00:03:56.803 --> 00:04:00.329
The optimum breadth of the mat
was determined to be 18 inches,

00:04:00.353 --> 00:04:02.592
after we tested many different versions

00:04:02.616 --> 00:04:05.203
and observed the average
stride length of a person.

00:04:06.111 --> 00:04:08.547
Otherwise, people might step
over the sensor.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:09.040 --> 00:04:11.612
We started with a proof of concept
built in three days

00:04:11.636 --> 00:04:14.509
made out of cardboard and aluminum foil.

00:04:15.294 --> 00:04:17.421
It worked for real.

00:04:17.957 --> 00:04:20.647
We built another one
with aluminum composite panels

00:04:20.671 --> 00:04:22.309
and piezoelectric plates,

00:04:22.333 --> 00:04:25.904
which are plates that generate a small
pulse of electricity under pressure.

00:04:26.959 --> 00:04:30.228
We tested this at 30
different pilots in public,

00:04:30.252 --> 00:04:33.974
in crowded restaurants,
in malls, in temples, etc.,

00:04:33.998 --> 00:04:35.847
to see how people reacted.

00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:38.743
And people let us run these pilots

00:04:38.767 --> 00:04:45.243
because they were excited to see locals
work on problems for the city.

00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:48.776
I was 15 and my team members
were in their early 20s.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:49.736 --> 00:04:52.044
When the sensors were colored,

00:04:52.068 --> 00:04:57.124
people would get scared
and would ask us questions like,

00:04:57.148 --> 00:04:59.354
"Will I get electrocuted
if I step on this?"

00:05:00.115 --> 00:05:04.744
Or, if it was very obvious that it was
an electronic sensor on the ground,

00:05:04.768 --> 00:05:06.449
they would just jump over it.

00:05:07.275 --> 00:05:10.449
So we decided to design
a cover for the sensor

00:05:10.473 --> 00:05:13.530
so that people don't have to worry
what it is on the ground.

NOTE Paragraph

00:05:13.554 --> 00:05:15.530
So after some experimentation,

00:05:15.554 --> 00:05:18.364
we decided to use an industrial sensor

00:05:18.388 --> 00:05:22.371
used a safety trigger
in hazardous areas as the sensor,

00:05:22.395 --> 00:05:24.637
and we black neoprene rubber sheet

00:05:24.661 --> 00:05:25.903
as the cover.

00:05:26.374 --> 00:05:29.191
Now, another added benefit
of using black rubber

00:05:29.215 --> 00:05:32.842
was that dust naturally
accumulates over the surface,

00:05:32.866 --> 00:05:35.016
eventually camouflaging it
with the ground.

00:05:35.540 --> 00:05:40.652
We also had to make sure that the sensor
is no higher than 12 millimeters.

00:05:41.206 --> 00:05:43.435
Otherwise, people might trip over it,

00:05:43.459 --> 00:05:45.364
which in itself would cause stampedes.

NOTE Paragraph

00:05:45.792 --> 00:05:49.579
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:05:49.603 --> 00:05:50.753
We don't want that.

00:05:52.802 --> 00:05:56.881
So we were able to design a sensor
which was only 10 millimeters thick.

NOTE Paragraph

00:05:57.469 --> 00:05:59.709
Now the data is sent
to the server in real time,

00:05:59.733 --> 00:06:01.381
and a heat map is plotted,

00:06:01.405 --> 00:06:04.074
taking into account all
the active devices on the ground.

00:06:04.772 --> 00:06:09.057
The authorities could be alerted
if the crowd movement slowed down

00:06:09.081 --> 00:06:12.216
or if the crowd density moved
beyond a desired threshold.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:12.992 --> 00:06:15.361
We installed five of these mats

00:06:15.385 --> 00:06:17.984
in the Nashik Kumbh Mela 2015,

00:06:18.008 --> 00:06:20.398
and counted over half a million people

00:06:20.422 --> 00:06:22.104
in 18 hours,

00:06:22.128 --> 00:06:26.505
ensuring that the data was available
in realtime at various checkpoints,

00:06:26.529 --> 00:06:28.405
ensuring a safe flow of people.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:28.429 --> 00:06:31.874
Now, this system, eventually,
with other innovations,

00:06:31.898 --> 00:06:34.986
is what helped prevent stampedes
altogether at that festival.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:35.585 --> 00:06:38.458
The code used by Ashioto during Kumbh Mela

00:06:38.482 --> 00:06:41.894
will soon be made publicly available
free to use for anyone.

00:06:41.918 --> 00:06:43.735
I would be glad if someone used this,

00:06:43.759 --> 00:06:46.013
the code, to make
many more gatherings safer.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:46.878 --> 00:06:48.804
Having succeeded at Kumbh Mela

00:06:48.828 --> 00:06:52.740
has inspired me to help others
who may also suffer from stampedes.

00:06:52.764 --> 00:06:55.523
The design of the system
makes it adaptable

00:06:55.547 --> 00:06:57.591
to pretty much any event

00:06:57.615 --> 00:07:01.411
that involves an organized
gathering of people,

00:07:01.435 --> 00:07:05.745
and my new dream is to improve,
adapt, and deploy the system

00:07:05.769 --> 00:07:11.238
all over the world to prevent loss of life
and ensure a safe flow of people,

00:07:11.262 --> 00:07:14.049
because every human soul is precious,

00:07:14.073 --> 00:07:16.451
whether at concerts or sporting events,

00:07:16.475 --> 00:07:18.362
the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad,

00:07:18.386 --> 00:07:19.837
the Hajj in Mecca,

00:07:19.861 --> 00:07:21.758
the Shia procession to Karbala,

00:07:21.782 --> 00:07:23.266
or at the Vatican City.

NOTE Paragraph

00:07:23.893 --> 00:07:25.791
So what do you all think, can we do it?

NOTE Paragraph

00:07:25.815 --> 00:07:28.918
(Cheers)

NOTE Paragraph

00:07:29.232 --> 00:07:32.470
(Applause)