The science of managing crowds at the biggest-ever London Marathon

The 2024 London Marathon will see over 50,000 people take on the 26.2 mile race for the first time ever - becoming the only marathon in the world other than New York to achieve this – with the help of Manchester Met crowd management science. 

And with a crowd of hundreds of thousands of spectators expected to line the route, experts at Manchester Met are working behind the scenes to make sure the event goes smoothly.

Crowd scientists at the University are helping to revolutionise marathon management around the world.

They provide calculations that are used to determine the entire journey from arrival time of each runner, to prepare each aid station for the expected runner flow and to prepare measures for any unexpected incidents during the race.

The team, led by Marcel Altenburg, has worked on the largest marathons in the world across Europe, America, Asia and Australia, as well as football games featuring Premier League champions, Champions League winners, national teams and even crowd control for the Queen’s funeral.  

Altenburg, Senior Lecturer in Crowd Science at Manchester Met, said: “The largest races in the world get their crowd science from the University. As a crowd scientist, there’s nothing more dynamic than a marathon.  

“A marathon is hypodynamic. Every single runner has their own start time. Every single runner has their own pace and every single runner has their own behaviour. 

“The big question for a marathon like this is; how can we safely bring more runners on the course? 

“The city doesn’t give you more space - if anything the city is shrinking with construction sites and overall development. It gets narrow and that’s something that you feel even if you don’t grow your event. If you do grow your event, you feel it even more. So, how can you get people through there safely? 

“And they’re covering 26.2 miles while they’re doing all of this. So it’s a citywide hypodynamic environment and crowd scientists keep an overview over this and shape it.” 

Crowd Science is an emerging field of research which focuses on crowd safety issues by analysing multiple issues that affect the dynamics of a crowd.  

Altenburg has created Start Right, a unique mathematical algorithm to help race organisers visualise the flow of runners through the entire course, helping to model and predict crowd behaviour during marathons.   

He said: “I was always a runner and I always loved numbers. So I was always calculating when I was running myself.” 

Altenburg and his team will be working on multiple major events in 2024, including Soundstormin Saudi Arabia, the biggest music festival in the world.   

He said: “Every event is super different. Formula One races, concerts, football matches, they’re all very different, but none of them would work without a crowd.” 

Find out more about crowd science at Manchester Met and how it is helping the management of major events in the University’s Met Magazine.