Attendance estimate controversy for Tommy Robinsons Unite the Kingdom rally

[jackfrostvc]

Tommy Robinsons Unite the Kingdom rally has been reported to have had an attendance of around ~ 110k to 150k+ depending on which media report you read.

Tommy had posted on his twitter feed that The Guardians estimate of 110k is a lie . (I think it was actually reported as 110k+), and that from the footage of the event, it's more like millions. See his tweet below.

Is there a way to estimate the attendance from the footage of the event?

I don't think AI will help much?, as I'd guess it's using media reported data. Unless AI can review the footage I suppose and draw an estimate without paying attention to the media reports

 

[Matt33]

Is there a way to estimate the attendance from the footage of the event?

In theory it's fairly simple, you need the area of the event and multiply it by 4 persons per square meter, or maybe 3 to take into account that it gets fuzzy on the edges. If you know the streets and places where people gathered, you can use Google Maps to calculate the size of the area. I guess that's about what e.g. the police does.
Or vice versa, divide 3 million by 3 p/m2, and you get the area that would have been necessary to accomodate such many people and compare it to what can be seen on footage. In this case 3 million people would correspond to 1 square kilometers which is about 140 soccer or 180 football fields. To get a feel for that, the yellow circle would be packed with people. In my opinion, "millions" is vastly exaggerated and 100.000 to 150.000 seems legit.

 

[MonkeeSage]

Drone footage of the crowd from The Guardian is here.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0HHZbvvQOE