The Use Of Numerical Simulation To Plan A Mass Event During Pandemic

The paper describes the analysis developed for the ATP finals event in Turin during November 2021. The event has been organized under COVID-19 restrictions on the basis of Italian regulations. Numerical simulations (CFD and pedestrian analyses) were used to support the safety plan. CFD analysis has been performed to evaluate how to use the mechanical ventilation (air change) to dilute a generic concentration that represents the potential viral load produced by people in the indoor arena. Crowd analysis has been performed to evaluate the people behavior during the phase of ingress and egress. In this case the calculation domain includes the indoor sporting arena that can host up to 12000 people and the outdoor sponsor village. Queue time and density have been monitored to compare alternative design solutions regarding the number of gates, in particular in the entrance phase. The critical points of these analyses were the external gates where gatherings were most likely to happen during the ingress, due to the checking points for the EU Digital COVID Certificate, and during the egress, because of the simultaneous exit from the whole arena. The ingress and the ordinary egress simulations considered the social distance according to the guidelines of the Italian scientific committee and World Health Organization.