Shafaqna English– IEEE Access has published the paper “Solving Hajj and Umrah Challenges using Information and Communication Technology: A Survey” written by Ahmad J. Showail in 2022.
According to Shafaqna, this paper classifies research efforts that used information and communication technologies for solving Hajj and Umrah challenges over the past 33 years based on their applications in 10 categories. Moreover, it identifies more than 30 technologies used by researchers all over the world to address Hajj and Umrah issues and groups research efforts based on these technologies for ease of access.
Here are some research ideas and practical suggestions for using information and communication technology to solve Hajj and Umrah challenges:
- Missing-pilgrims: There are many initiatives to track pilgrims on a real-time basis through web-based systems such as PilgrimTrackr and e-Mutawwif, systems using the Internet of Things (IoT) to monitor, locate and track lost pilgrims. Missing-pilgrims can be tracked using GPS and Arduino board.
- Emergency situations: There are systems such as pilgrim identification system that is based on RFID technology and an emergency system based on geo-fencing alerts. There is another system which uses both radio frequency and GSM network. Spatio Temporal Service Model (STSM) predicts and detects very large crowds. This model is used to guide officials into the optimal path to shelters in case of disasters.
- Answering all the questions that the pilgrims might have in real time: Hajj-QAES is designed to handle both basic and advanced questions. It could help in educating pilgrims in the Hajj preparation phase as well. M-Hajj is a similar initiative that uses Case Based Reasoning (CBR) and Decision Trees to come up with the optimal answers. In reality, many pilgrims rely on YouTube videos to find answers for their ritual questions. A context-aware smartphone application called Mobile Muslim Companion provides personalized information to pilgrims based on the user’s context. GuideMe initiative reminds pilgrims with the appropriate sayings (doaa) based on the GPS location of the smart devices. V-Hajj is a learning tool designed based on virtual environment and multimedia technologies to motivate elderly people to learn about the rituals before visiting the holy land.
- Hajj management: A Hajj management system known as e-Hajj supports the Hajj candidates in their journey starting from the registration phase until the repatriation. Another comprehensive Hajj management solution for Hajj is based on RFID technology.
- Control measures through real-time surveillance: Hajj-MDSS which is a Hajj Mobile Disease Surveillance System will help enhance prevention and control measures through real-time surveillance. An agent-based modeling is designed to predict the possible scenarios of disease spread in the Grand Mosque during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Machine learning algorithms have been used to predict the length of stay of pilgrims in the emergency department during Hajj. An e-health smart networked system decreases the required time of serving a large number of patients during Hajj, particularly in emergency and accident situations.
- Hajj crowd management: Smartcrowd is an initiative that uses mobile cloud computing for crowd estimation. Using Faster Region CNN to achieve accurate computer vision-based crowd management was also suggested. The RFID technology through a mobile app was used to control the crowd. Since early 2000’s, computerized systems were proposed to guide and control the crowds in Hajj. A GPS-based mobile app is proposed for crowd control. This application is Android based and is available in six languages, namely: Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Turkish. A pilgrim-centric crowd management approach had also been proposed in the literature. Electronic means, such as electronic billboards (EBBs), SMS messages, audio- video Hajj podcasts, and pre-recorded TV clips were used to increase the pilgrims’ awareness on the hazards of poor crowd management and how stampedes are avoided.
- Transportation: Since the airport is not located in Mecca, buses used to be the main transportation method to and from the sacred sites. To understand bus movements in Hajj, an interactive platform is implemented that analyzes GPS traces of more than 20,000 buses during Hajj. A parking spot allocation algorithm is invented for parking allocation. The proposed system considered real-time street traffic while choosing the optimal parking spot. IoT was also proposed to help in solving traffic jams during Hajj. By sensing the level of crowdedness in the road, real time decisions will help in easing the jams instantaneously.
- Smart-fire detection: Smart Mina is a wireless network infrastructure for smart-fire detection in Mina using LoRaWAN. Optimization techniques are used to find the optimal distribution of tents in Mina to improve the efficiency and increase the capacity. Yasein et al. (2019) proposed the use of IoT to transform the camps in Mina into smart ones. Also, Neural Networks (NN) and Fuzzy Inference Rules (FIR) are used to estimate the Short Term Load Forecasting (STLF) of power during Hajj. STLF is very important for the planning and maintenance optimization of power systems.
- Cyber Security and Privacy: A lattice-based model is proposed that allows sharing the information securely between ministries during Hajj. IoT is proposed as a service to manage services during Hajj. Blockchain is also used to manage Hajj and Umrah. In this framework, it is tried to solve the permit fraud, accommodation, and healthcare issues using blockchain technology. A 3-layer security system is proposed for protecting Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) of pilgrims against cybercrimes.
- There are some other challenges in Hajj and Umrah that could be solved using information and communication technologies. These challenges include: financial technology, tourism, language, weather, food and beverage, probability of illness transmission and pandemic, waste management, communication and difficulty in accessing wireless telecommunication services using smartphones during Hajj, and illegal pilgrims who do not have valid Hajj permits.
Source: IEEE Access