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April 3, 2007
A GCI Seminar |
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| Title |
Challenges in Planning for Hajj, the Annual
Muslims’ Pilgrimage to Makkah: Spatial Modeling for Complex Planning
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| Speaker |
Kheir Al-Kodmany
Director of Graduate Studies and
Associate Professor, Urban Planning and Policy Program
UIC College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs
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| Location |
Great Cities Institute, Suite 400 CUPPA Hall
412 South Peoria, Chicago, IL 60607
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Challenges in Planning For
Hajj… discusses
insurmountable challenges in planning for Hajj, the annual
Muslims’ pilgrimage to Makkah. It addresses important
questions on employing technology in planning for a large-scale
and complex event. Hajj involves a series of complex spatial-temporal
activities of hosting and transporting 2-3 million pilgrims
through multiple sites in a week. Spatial modeling is
particularly challenging where seemingly insignificant
errors could lead to immense tragedies. The work also
reflects on the complexity of the decision making process
in the operational and political realms.
Kheir Al-Kodmany is Director
of Graduate Studies of the Urban Planning and Policy Program
at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and teaches in
the area of computer applications for planners. One aspect
of his research agenda reflects on recent planning experience
of Hajj during a two-year fellowship in Saudi Arabia.
Hajj, the annual Muslims’ pilgrimage to Makkah,
is the largest congregational event in the world. Multiple
research themes have emerged including defining critical
information for planning, crowd dynamic modeling, real-time
monitoring systems, complex spatial modeling, and power
and planning. New research builds on previous extensive
studies he made on participatory planning and technology
including GIS, visualization and the Internet.
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