Anoeta stadium participated on Saturday in a simulated evacuation exercise as part of the eVACUATE Project - an ambitious project in which Real Sociedad have been collaborating for some time and whose objective is to guarantee the safety of the public in evacuation procedures from complex spaces and infrastructures. As part of this project, similar evacuation drills to the ones conducted this past weekend at Anoeta will be put into practice at Athens International Airport, Bilbao Underground rail system and an STX France passenger cruise ship moored on the French coast.

During the past week a total of 27 researchers from various different European companies and universities have been working in San Sebastián with an experimental, technological system to find different solutions in the gathering of information. The objective of the exercise, which was conducted with the help of 120 volunteers, was to establish in real time, the optimal evacuation routes in situations where a large mass of people are gathered, such as a football match at Anoeta stadium. In order to achieve this, a large number of fans were asked to enter the ground through Gate 27 and take their places in the lower tier of the main stand. From that point on, the fans were requested to follow the instructions from stewards and experienced in situ, four different types of evacuations under diverse conditions and situations. Completely different emergency situations were created through a number of methods, such as evacuation instructions being relayed through the stadium’s in-house Public Address system, via signage assembled at various points of the stadium and the opening of the main exit doors.

eVACUATE is an integral Safety and Security Management System which, on the one hand, uses technology based on analysis, assessment and decision-making and, on the other, offers solution in the gathering of information for handheld devices as well as desktop platforms. The union of all of this information will allow evacuation plans to be adapted to the changing conditions of any emergency situation.