Understanding aspects of pilgrimage using social networks derived from smartphones

The Hajj pilgrimage to Makkah and Madinah is one of the biggest annual events in the world, where millions of people congregate for religious rituals over several days. The main challenge for organizers and participants is to ensure a smooth flow through the activities and a safe, healthy and spiritual journey during the pilgrimage. A deep knowledge of how the pilgrims behave during this event is a precondition for improving these issues. One approach to understand the behaviors of pilgrims is a social network analysis based on spatial proximity information. In this work we use a proximity system to identify pilgrims social networks and apply social network analysis to (i) estimate the experience level of the pilgrims and differentiate leaders from followers, (ii) observe how groups of pilgrims are created around prayers and (iii) identify density peaks and recognize changes in group formation over time. The suggested proximity system is created by merging ANT+ and Bluetooth, two inhomogeneous peer-to-peer systems. Merging is facilitated by using (i) social rules of pilgrims, (ii) existing wearable devices and (iii) GPS location information. Proposed methods are applied on data collected from 41 participants during their 8 day pilgrimage.