With Atlanta welcoming the world, Georgia Tech researchers are helping make sure fans, visitors, and residents have a safer, more seamless experience during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Researchers in the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL), with support from the Georgia Tech Police Department (GTPD), have worked with the Georgia World Congress Center Authority (GWCCA) for the past year to support pedestrian and traffic management. The lab’s insights are designed to improve traffic plans and crowd movement control policies before, during, and after Atlanta’s eight World Cup games. 

ASDL Senior Research Engineer Michael Balchanos and a team of Ph.D. students have shadowed the GWCCA Police Department to understand the traffic management challenges during major events at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. They discovered that a key technical challenge is monitoring and understanding the constantly changing nature of safety planning and traffic operations during large-crowd “mega” events. That’s why they’ve developed data-calibrated simulations and digital twins to better support those operations during the World Cup.

“Our digital twins blend multiple streams of data to create models about how cars and people will move when they interact with each other. Once we determine their rules of behavior, our simulations evaluate different traffic interventions to avoid bottlenecks, traffic slowdowns, and unwanted crowdedness,” said Balchanos, who is leading the project. “Our custom-built interface allows us to build different scenarios and simulate different approaches, in real time, as conditions change.”

Balchanos said decision makers can use that dashboard to advise what interventions, if any, should be used, and when. Enabled by simulation running in the background, the interactive tool uses the simulated traffic data to rapidly evaluate the impact of these interventions. 

His team includes aerospace Ph.D. students Hajar Mali, Nathnael Geneti, Balaji Ravikanti, and Mario Zarate. 

“While it may seem surprising for aerospace researchers to work on solutions for traffic system-related decision-making problems, this effort is actually the latest initiative under the decade-long partnership between ASDL and GTPD,” said ASDL Director and Regents’ Professor Dimitri Mavris. “By leveraging ASDL’s data-driven simulation and digital twin capabilities, this initiative brings the lab’s years of expertise in advanced modeling for aerospace systems to the problem of people and vehicle traffic in downtown Atlanta during the games.”