How Technology and Humans Can Intelligently Safeguard Mass Events

When a city becomes the host of a large-scale international event — sporting, cultural, or political — the security challenge changes completely. It’s not only about securing a venue, but about bolstering the confidence of thousands of people, locals and visitors alike. That confidence demands flawless coordination, advance planning, and technology that works with precision.

In the coming months, three of Mexico’s most representative and important cities — Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey — will take on a leading role in global sports. Their role will not only be that of hosts, but of international showcases that will reflect the country’s capacity to organize, welcome, and protect thousands of fans from around the world. This opportunity puts Mexico in the sights of sports tourism and turns each of these cities into strategic points along a route that, for a brief but intense period, will attract unprecedented attention, emotions, and logistical challenges. The magnitude of the event calls for far more than enthusiasm: It requires meticulous preparation that goes beyond the sporting arena and spans everything from urban mobility to intelligent security management.

The fans who attend these events are as diverse as they are passionate. Their presence brings positive energy, but it also entails major responsibility for authorities. Today, the question isn’t how many security personnel are deployed, but how crowd flows are managed in real time, how risks are anticipated without detracting from the event experience, and how to ensure that every split-second decision is the right one.

In these scenarios, security doesn’t begin or end at the stadium. The real challenge lies at the points of connection: airports, adjacent streets, routes between cities, spontaneous gathering spaces, such as plazas or shopping areas, and also medical care centers or temporary athlete villages. Each of these nodes can become critical, and protecting them requires more than physical presence. It demands up-to-date, shared information, fluid communication, and response capabilities that are as fast as they are precise.

To achieve this, inter-agency coordination must be comprehensive. Police, traffic authorities, civil protection, medical services, transport operators, and private security companies should operate as a single network. This collaboration is possible when there is a solid technological foundation that allows everyone to speak the same language, exchange data in real time, and carry out coordinated decisions without friction.

Having digital radios that enable reliable communication even under adverse conditions, intelligent video security systems capable of detecting suspicious behavior patterns, command centers that consolidate operational information to act quickly, and interoperability platforms that connect all stakeholders is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessary standard.

It’s also essential to incorporate predictive analytics tools that help anticipate incidents. It’s not about guessing the future, but learning from the past and the current context to be better prepared. By analyzing urban behavior, mobility data, and the nature of the event, it’s possible to identify potential risk areas before they become problems.

An increasingly relevant aspect is the integration of public and private security. Event organizers, logistics operators, hotel chains, airlines, and transport services cannot operate in silos. They are all part of the experience and can actively contribute to safety. Today’s technologies enable this collaboration to translate into concrete actions, from sharing real-time images to coordinating radio communications among different actors, even when they belong to different sectors.

Latin America has seen significant progress on this front. Recent experiences in large regional operations have taught a clear lesson: technology implemented for a special occasion, when planned with vision, can become a legacy for everyday life. A communications system used during a sporting event can be critical in responding to a natural disaster. A video security network that protects access points and perimeters can later monitor school zones or transport hubs.

That’s why investment in security infrastructure should not be seen as a temporary expense, but as a structural improvement that strengthens the city long after the event ends.

As technology becomes more sophisticated, responsibilities also increase. The use of artificial intelligence tools, for example, demands transparency. Automated decisions that affect people must be explainable, auditable, and supervised. Public trust is built through the clarity with which these solutions are implemented, and through respect for the ethical principles that guide them.

Designing technology with purpose means considering not only its operational capacity, but also its social impact. It is therefore essential that systems generating alerts allow their sources, criteria, and confidence thresholds to be traced. In this way, solutions are not only efficient but also trustworthy.

Ultimately, what defines the success of an event is not just what happens inside the main venue. The experience of those who arrive in the city, walk its streets, use its public transport, and join the celebration also matters — a great deal. When security works, it becomes invisible. And that’s the best outcome: that people remember the moment they lived, not the incident that was avoided.

A host city is measured by its organizational capacity, but also by its empathy, preparedness, and willingness to protect everyone who visits. Well-managed security is not an imposition; it’s a promise kept.