Notting Hill Carnival Strategic Review - Intelligent Space

Figure (6): Barrier Locations at the Carnival in 2001
Figure (7): Location of First Aid Centres and other Crowd
Management Facilities at the Carnival in 2001
2.67 Of the other crowd management facilities, the first aid treatment centres managed by SJA
play an important part during the Carnival. There were 18 treatment centres in 2001 and their
locations are shown in Figure 7 above.
Visitor Numbers and Flows
2.68 The results of this observation study provided some key facts on the scale of the Carnival and
this can be used to help monitor the event’s development and inform present and future
crowd management strategies:
approximately 710,000 visitors came to Carnival 2001 in total. The number of visitors on the
Monday was higher, accounting for 64 per cent of all visitors, whilst the Sunday accounted for 36 per
cent.
as far as can be determined from information on past years, Carnival increased in size steadily
throughout the 1990s, although attendance numbers fell in 2001. The historical trend of growth is
an important long-term safety consideration, given the uncontrolled nature of the event in terms of
visitor numbers. Figure 8 below provides a trend line for visitor numbers over the last ten years.
Based on indicators from St. John Ambulance data 65 , the figures show that the number of visitors in
2001 was lower than the previous year, by perhaps as much as 200,000. According to this index, the
last time that visitor numbers were as low as 2001 was probably in the mid-1990s. The historical
growth in numbers appears to have peaked around 1.2 million in 1999 and fallen since then by nearly
half a million.
Figure (8): Trend in Carnival Visitor Numbers
65
Although no full visitor counts were made in the past, a technique for extrapolating visitor estimates was applied to accident data
from St. John Ambulance.
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