Our Thinking

The UK Government is planning for the safe return of spectators to live sport from October 2020. Movement Strategies has been commissioned by the Sports Grounds Safety Authority (SGSA) to support the evaluation of social distancing measures at a series of upcoming pilot sporting events to enable the safe re-opening of sports venues in the future.

Movement Strategies has partnered with Autodesk, the world leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software, to help organisations design for social distancing.

Professor Steve Gwynne, alongside colleagues at Underwriters Laboratories, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Research Council Canada have recently published a paper on "A review of post-incident studies for wildland-urban interface fires"

Football clubs are seeking specialist safety advice on how to bring fans back to games in a first step towards supporters returning.

A particular type of simulation - known as agent-based modelling - tries to understand how individuals in a crowd will behave...

Our Executive Director, Simon Ancliffe will join a live webinar panel on Tuesday 30 June 2020 at 12.00GMT: "Back in play: Re opening sports venues"

This paper discusses the impact of crowd composition on egress performance. Same stadium, different events, different crowds. How does the crowd egress change?

Dr Aoife Hunt, Associate Director at Movement Strategies (a GHD company) recently joined the BBC 4 Radio show "More or Less: Behind the Statistics"

A recent online poll* held by GHD, one of the world’s leading professional services companies, revealed that 70% of respondents do not feel comfortable returning to work unless social distancing measures are in place. The survey also showed that 60% of participants would like to see more permanent social distancing measures implemented at their workplace following the crisis.

Steve Scott, Executive Leader of GHD Advisory UK, on how an "Agile Strategy" is needed to resuscitate our high streets and how Movement Insights will play a key role.

How do we get people back to the high street safely? It is not as simple as widening pathways and spacing queues by 2m. More maths is needed than you think. Dr Aoife Hunt considers the challenge local councils now face to adhere to government plans once lockdown eases.

Social distancing reduces efficiency and productivity. Business and organisation leaders are looking for ways to recover and optimise productivity in these circumstances. Go beyond compliance to maximise safety and optimise productivity. Simon Ancliffe talks about solutions to the current challenges faced by businesses.

The Covid-19 crisis poses many challenges. These occur at individual, national and international levels, and on numerous fronts. Here we discuss the different types of local emergencies that might occur and how responding to them becomes all the more challenging during a time of a national or international crisis.

Dr Aoife Hunt presented to the SGSA conference on 4th September on crowd movement research carried out at Wembley Stadium and also some of the latest security considerations, including the impact of Hostile Vehicle Mitigation (HVM), both with respect to Zone Ex. The presentation is summarised here.

Over the last year, Movement Strategies has made an increased effort to derive and share research findings from its ongoing innovative practice. In addition, we have collaborated with research partners to conduct dedicated research activities.

Movement Insights ingests a range of movement, spend and social data-sets to give a clear picture of how a city, retailer or other physical space is performing and where the most effective interventions and campaigns might be to improve performance.

2019 was looking likely as the year in which the ICO would flex its muscles - the £500k fine imposed on Facebook now looks pretty paltry, especially given the relative scale of Facebook and BA (Facebook’s revenues are about 4 times that of BA’s, which were £12.2Bn in 2017).

The Victorian theatres were designed to maximise the revenue, by squeezing in as many seats as possible. But would the visitor experience have been better in the late 1800s?