Solving Hajj and Umrah Challenges Using Information and Communication Technology: A Survey

Abstract

Hajj and Umrah are Muslims' religious pilgrimages to Makkah, Saudi Arabia. Hajj is considered the largest annual gathering in the world. In Islam, each and every able-bodied adult is obligated to go for Hajj at least once in his/her lifetime. Hajj takes place between the 8 th and the 13 th day of Dhul Hijjah, which is the last month of the Islamic year while Umrah, the minor pilgrimage, could be done any time of the year. In Hajj, pilgrims, also known as Hajjis, travel around 15 km and pilgrims have the choice to do it by foot, bus or by train. The Hajj journey starts from Mina, which is considered the largest tent city in the world because it hosts more than 10,000 fire resistant tents, and includes various religious rituals. Around 3 million Muslims from more than 183 countries make Hajj every year and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is working on increasing this number. Since 1989, researchers in various ICT domains have tried leveraging their expertise in solving challenges and issues related to Hajj and Umrah. Although several papers have surveyed efforts using technology in Hajj and Umrah research, none of them was comprehensive. In this paper, I classified 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. I also identified more than 30 technologies used by researchers all over the world to address Hajj and Umrah issues and group research efforts based on these technologies for ease of access. Furthermore, open challenges were discussed and new technologies that could be used to address these challenges were proposed.

A scoping review of Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca: Mapping the health concerns and proposed solutions

“…Currently, there is a growing issue to apply the updated technology to effectively and efficiently monitor general and health condition among pilgrims. They included smartphone‐based application, real‐time Hajj rule extraction, social media based service (i.e., using the tweets), web‐based tracking and navigation systems, mobile diseases surveillance system, e‐Hajj, and so forth (Showail, 2022). Those ideas for solutions are recommended based on the included papers in the analysis to improve the quality of service and prevent avoidable morbidity and mortality during the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca.…”

Quantitative Analysis of Global Research Trends in Crowd Management for Tawaf: A Bibliometric Study (1997–2023)

“…Showail [1] conducted an extensive survey comprising 330 references to solve hajj and umrah challenges using Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Over 30 technologies currently used to address various hajj and umrah issues are analyzed.…”

“…Tawaf consists of circumambulating the Kaaba in an anti-clockwise manner seven times, and Saee is performed between the hills of Safa and Marwa. The annual hajj pilgrimage is performed from the 8th to the 12th day of the month of Zhul-hijjah and also consists of performing Tawaf [1].…”

Artificial Intelligence Applications Featuring Ease and Safety Factors at the Two Holy Mosques

“…Based on all these issues, many various modern technologies were proposed by researchers to tackle Hajj and Umrah challenges (Shambour & Gutub, 2021). In addition, AI has been proposed to overcome a variety of challenges facing the presidency, where Image Processing and Computer Vision technologies have been applied to leverage the ubiquitous CCTV infrastructure that can be found in sacred places (Showail, 2022). Also, one of the areas that benefited a lot from AI to provide a great experience for visitors is teaching and education (Shambour & Gutub, 2021).…”

“…Showail (2022) in this survey, it was classified research efforts that used information and communication technologies for solving Hajj and Umrah challenges.Additionally, new technologies were proposed for addressing open challenges. According to the authors, the top two used technologies by researchers in this field are using AI.For dense crowd situations,Arif et al (2013) proposed a framework for automatically counting the moving person in a video.…”