Dynamics of crowded visitor flows in Valencia

This project explores crowd dynamics around Valencia Cathedral during the Mascletà de San José through Video Behaviour Analytics (VBA), computer vision techniques and visualisation methodologies inspired by Digital Humanities approaches. Beyond measuring density, the aim is to make crowd behaviour understandable, to turn raw movement data into a story that brings visitors, managers and researchers alike to a clearer awareness of what is really happening in this heritage space, and why it matters.

The objective is to identify how pedestrian behaviour adapts to changing density conditions, how collective dynamics may generate early indicators of crowd-related risk, and how increasing visitor pressure can affect both crowd safety and the sustainable use of heritage environments.

A protected ensemble

The Cathedral of Valencia stands at the centre of a protected historic ensemble. Around it are the Miguelete tower, the archaeological site of l'Almoina, la Virgen Square and the la Reina Square. What is valuable here is not only the buildings. It is also the ground between them: historic paving, worn thresholds, the excavated layers beneath the squares. Surfaces of this kind are not damaged by any single day.

Streets built for another century

The streets that connect these spaces are medieval. Miguelete and Barchilla have the widths they have because of how the city grew, not because anyone sized them for pedestrian flow. That scale is part of what makes the place worth visiting. It is also what makes it difficult to manage. The configuration that gives the ensemble its value is precisely the one that makes it critical when large numbers of people move through it at once.

The festival is heritage too

The Fallas are heritage as well. The Valencia Fallas festivity was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016. This changes how the problem should be understood. What happens in these streets during the festival is not heritage under pressure from tourism. It is living intangible heritage exerting pressure on the material heritage that hosts it. Neither of the two can be set aside. That is why the response is not to restrict the celebration, but to understand how it moves.

From Observation to Risk Detection

The purpose of these visualisations is to be preventive. Interpretation here is not an add-on, it is the tool that turns observation into understanding, and understanding into action.

By making collective dynamics visible, the platform seeks to support the early identification of conditions that may affect both crowd safety and the sustainable use of heritage environments.

Not all behavioural states imply risk. However, increasing density, reduced velocity, route conflicts, anomalous diagonal movements and localised stagnation may indicate the emergence of potentially hazardous crowd conditions.