Professor Aoife Hunt MBE PhD, PGC(HE), BSc(hons), FHEA, FIMA, MSyI

Aoife is a leading specialist in people movement, crowd dynamics and emergency evacuation strategies. She has 17 years’ experience in simulating human behaviour and pedestrian dynamics and has led high profile projects across the globe, advising on all aspects of people movement and behaviour in buildings, hospitals, stadia and events, the public realm, and transport systems. She has delivered more than 80 projects in pedestrian and evacuation planning, contributing to capacity assessments, design reviews, event and concert planning, vertical circulation assessments, static and dynamic crowd modelling, flow and density analysis, and alternative use assessments. She leads research projects to advance the safety and security of crowded places, specialising in human behaviour in emergencies and pedestrian movement through security overlays, including through hostile vehicle mitigation (HVM) barriers, and search and screening checkpoints. She is a specialist in designing CCTV studies of human behaviour and led the world’s largest study into virus transmission risk behaviours in crowded places during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Aoife is regularly consulted on national and international guidance documents such as the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds (Green Guide), and is currently co-authoring the chapter on evacuation modelling in the SFPE Fire Engineering handbook. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland and delivers lectures at several academic institutions. She has presented at over 100 conferences and events, holds memberships and committee roles across academia and industry, and in 2023 was awarded an MBE for her services to the COVID-19 response.