Dynamic Crowd Accident-Risk Assessment Based on Internal Energy and Information Entropy for Large-Scale Crowd Flow Considering COVID-19 Epidemic

Abstract

With the increase in inevitable large-scale crowd aggregation, disastrous pedestrian stampedes occurred with increasing frequency over the past decade. To prevent these tragedies, it is significant to assess crowd accident-risk (CAR) and identify high-risk areas to control crowd flow dynamically. The cost function of a conventional fluid dynamics model is improved with new items of Gaussian white noise and protection factor, considering both the abnormal pedestrian movements and social distance control due to epidemic, thereby to establish an improved crowd flow model comprehensively. Different from conventional density-based pedestrian aggregation-risk models, this study proposes a hybrid crowd accident-risk assessment (HCRA) model based on internal energy and information entropy. Using the HCRA model, we can consider not only crowd density but also the modulus and direction of a crowd velocity vector simultaneously. Then this study designs a framework to realize crowd accident risk assessment based on the improved crowd-flow model and HCRA model. To validate the proposed models, case studies of CAR assessment in the large-scale waiting hall of the Shanghai Hongqiao railway station are conducted. The pedestrian social control distance-range of 1.0 m–2.0 m under the COVID-19 epidemic situation is verified numerically. Moreover, a valuable result is that this social control distance-range can be shortened to 1.0 m–1.9 m without increase of crow accident-risk. Subsequently, the down-limit of accommodation-capacity of this large waiting hall can be enhanced to 10.54% under this epidemic.