Incidents at Large-Scale Events Highlight Need for Effective Crisis Management

WESTMINSTER, U.K. - Feb. 17, 2025 - PRLog -- Incidents at Large-Scale Events Highlight Need for Effective Crisis Management

Large-scale events are under growing scrutiny as recent incidents expose weaknesses in security, crowd control, and crisis response. With increasing attendance at sporting events, festivals, and corporate gatherings, organisers face mounting pressure to ensure public safety while minimising disruptions. However, gaps in real-time coordination and emergency response planning continue to cause major issues.

One recent example of this is the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where security concerns arose just hours before the opening ceremony. Coordinated arson attacks targeted France's rail network, causing major disruptions to transport systems and affecting nearly 800,000 travellers. There were also bomb threats that led to evacuations at key transport hubs, including Gare du Nord train station and Basel-Mulhouse airport. These incidents highlighted major vulnerabilities in event security and crisis response, raising concerns about the ability to manage large-scale threats effectively. Events on the scale of an Olympic and Paralympic Games have major readiness programmes but are challenging when incidents occur outside of a venue or where different bodies have a role.

Beyond transport security, ensuring crowd safety at major events remains a challenge with crowd behaviours particularly since the COVID pandemic involving less compliant crowds at many events. Large-scale gatherings require seamless coordination between security teams, emergency responders, and event organisers, yet many organisers still rely on outdated, manual processes that slow down decision-making. Without real-time monitoring, automated alerts, and digital coordination tools, organisers risk delays in emergency responses, miscommunication, and operational failures.

Training and readiness can often be the first budget casualty when event costs are under pressure. However people are the most important success factor in both successful events and incident response.

Controlled Events offers comprehensive services to enhance event command, control and communications, readiness exercising, event control management, specialised training programs, and robust communication solutions. Our expertise ensures that organisers are well-prepared to manage risks and maintain seamless operations during events.

About Controlled Events

Established in 2011, Controlled Events (https://controlledevents.com/) is a trusted, expert one-stop supplier of resilience, readiness, event control, and communications. We support a wide range of clients in corporate, international, national, and local events, as well as sectors including government, housing, construction, transport, emergency services, local government, industrial, and retail. Our services benefit from experience gained from managing a wide range of Event Control Rooms and coordinating responses to incidents.

By leveraging our extensive experience of incidents and events, Controlled Events improves organsations' preparedness for disruptive and pre-planned events, equipping decision makers with the tools and resources to respond and recover effectively.