Abstract
Pedestrian evacuation risk of subway stations is an important concern in city management, as it not only endangers public safety but also affects the efficiency of urban subway transportation. Determination of how to effectively evaluate the pedestrian evacuation risk of subway stations is of great significance to improve pedestrian safety. Previous studies about the pedestrian evacuation of subway station were primarily focused on pedestrian moving behaviors and the evacuation modeling, and the evacuation scenario is the regular subway operation. There is a dearth of studies to quantify the pedestrian evacuation risk in the evacuation process, especially the pedestrian evacuation risk quantitative characterization of subway station in large-scale sport activity. The current study develops a quantitative pedestrian evacuation risk assessment model that integrates pedestrian stampede probability and pedestrian casualty. Then several different simulation scenarios based on the social force model (SFM) are simulated to evaluate the pedestrian evacuation risk of the “Olympic Park Station” in Beijing, China. The results demonstrate that the pedestrian evacuation method, pedestrian stampede location, and distance from the stampede location to the ticket gate have a large impact on pedestrian evacuation risk. Then, the pedestrian evacuation scenarios with the lowest and highest risk for the “Olympic Park Station” in large-scale sport activity are determined. The findings have potential applications in pedestrian safety protection of subway station during large-scale sports activity.
Highlights
As an urban rail transit mode, subway transportation has some advantages of low pollution, convenient traffic, and low energy consumption, which is in conformity with the sustainable development of urban transport
Based on the classical risk assessment theory, this study proposes a quantitative pedestrian evacuation risk assessment model that combines the pedestrian stampede probability with the severity of this stampede event, as expressed as: Rp = θ × Ppr × Spc where Rp is pedestrian evacuation risk under large-scale sport activity, Ppr is stampede probability, Spc represents the consequence severity of the stampede event. θ is the trigger factor of pedestrian stampede, and it represents the correlation coefficient between the pedestrian stampede likelihood and the caused severity
The results demonstrate that the pedestrian evacuation methods, and pedestrian stampede event risk and the severity of locations have a large impact on pedestrian evacuation risk of subway station in large-scale sport the risk
Summary
As an urban rail transit mode, subway transportation has some advantages of low pollution, convenient traffic, and low energy consumption, which is in conformity with the sustainable development of urban transport. Sometimes, the subway station presents some characteristics of high pedestrian density, closed space, and slow pedestrian speed, which decreases the pedestrian flow efficiency and the passengers’ transfer comfort, and even causes a pedestrian stampede. During large-scale sports activities, the pedestrian flow of subway stations increases dramatically within a short time, which further increases pedestrian risk. Thereby, how to analyze the characteristics of pedestrian movement and evaluate the pedestrian evacuation risk plays a significant role in supporting the normal operation of subway station and ensuring pedestrian safety. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 3844; doi:10.3390/ijerph17113844 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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