Electric Mobility Vehicle Reservation and Crowd Management for Al-masjid Al-haram

This paper addresses the growing need for efficient management of electric mobility vehicles in high-traffic environments. We present the design and development of a software system to support electric mobility vehicle reservation and management for use in the existence of crowds. The design is applied on a use case for electric vehicles used by visitors to Al-masjid Al-haram for performing “Tawaf”, a pilgrimage ritual conducted by Muslims visiting the holy land in Makkah. To enhance accessibility for visitors, the government has introduced electric mobility vehicles. However, the current manual reservation and management poses challenges, including locating the vehicles, unpredictable waiting times, the lack of real-time vehicle availability information, and congestions. The design of the software solution aims to address these challenges using automated reservation and management, heatmap crowd detection, and location-based GPS to track and locate vehicles. A preliminary evaluation on a sample of target users indicates the usefulness of the system and its ability to contribute to solving current management problems and enhancing the experience of visitors.