PRE2020 1 Group2

Introduction The measures taken for prevention of the spread of the coronavirus financially affect all sorts of enterprises. Employees are obligated to work from home, children suddenly had to follow online education, thousands of people lost their jobs et cetera. From one moment to the other, there was a lockdown and it wasn’t allowed to leave your home if it wasn’t for a crucial job, grocery shopping or a for a run (on your own). Social distancing is the new norm.

The Netherlands is slowing building up the ‘1.5m-society’; hotels, restaurants, cafes, gyms, museums, education facilities, offices et cetera are allowed to welcome people again, provided that its visitors keep 1.5m distance at all times. However, there is one sector that is still deeply suffering from the measures taken concerning the coronavirus: the event branch. It is not (and will not be in the near future) allowed to organize events with large numbers of people. Festivals, expositions, fairs, markets, mass sports events are all removed from the calendars. But might there be innovative solutions that would nevertheless make such events possible again? That’s exactly what we are going to focus on during this project!

We are going to develop a device that makes sure all visitors of events always keep safe distance of 1.5m between each other. The principle is rather simple: everybody wears this gadget and when two (or more) come into a radius of 1.5m of each other, an alarming signal will go off. This will serve as a warning to the visitors to remain distanced from each other. Furthermore, the violation of the social distancing rules of this specific individual will be registered. The event-organizers could decide to intervene after for instance five warnings.

Objectives The current COVID-19 situation makes the coming together of hundreds or even thousands of people impossible. The event branch is financially hit and does not have any certainty about when events will be allowed again. Therefore, goal of this project is to come up with an innovative and safe way to make the organization of events possible in times in which the coronavirus is lurking. It is aimed to develop and test a prototype and evaluate the functioning of the device and improve its functionalities.

Stakeholders Users The direct users of the device will be visitors of events like concerts, festivals, expositions et cetera. When you visit an event at which this device will be used, you must accept the terms. This means that the event-organizers will provide you with a device that tracks the distance you keep from other people. This way the organization can do crowd control to make sure that everybody respects the rules of social distancing. The organization thus uses the devices to create a safe environment for its visitors. Society Although restaurants and cafés are opening their doors and summer-evenings are being spent on the terrace, the festival-summer is entirely cancelled. The social isolation is deeply affecting not only children and young adults, but also the elderly. Everybody longs for entertainment, like we were used to. Therefore, it would be a relief, not only economically, but also psychologically for the society if the event sector could resume activities.

Enterprise In this crisis it becomes clear that many sectors profit from the organization of events. Sport athletes, artists, bands, orchestras, catering and all organizations that are responsible for the setting up of events suddenly were busy cancelling their events and paying back people’s money instead of making money. Many enterprises are in deep crisis or already went bankrupt. This device could make events allowed again, because it makes sure that the social distancing rules are being respected. Additionally, if extra attention is being payed to hygiene, events could take place again.