Stampede Prevention Design of Primary School Buildings in China: A Sustainable Built Environment Perspective.

Kefan Xie,Xiang Liu,Jia Liu,Benbu Liang,Yu Song

doi:10.3390/ijerph15071517

Abstract

In China, crowd stampede accidents usually take place within crowded areas in middle and primary schools. The crowd stampede risk is particularly related to the architectural design such as the staircase design, the layout of crowded places, obstacles, etc. Through the investigation of building design in several primary schools, the relationship between the sustainable layout of crowded places (e.g., toilets, canteens, playgrounds, staircases) and the crowd stampede risk of students are introduced via agent-based simulations. In particular, different experimental scenarios are conducted on stairs in the primary buildings. The evacuation processes are recorded by video camera and spatial stepping characteristics (e.g., foot clearance, step length, mass center, the distance between the mass center and ankle, and etc.) are extracted from the video. Dynamic steady ability is investigated by adopting the margin of stability, quantified by the instantaneous difference between the edge of the base of support and extrapolated vertical projection of the mass center. Based on the sustainable built environment principles and historical data of students, this paper focuses on an in-depth analysis of the staircase design aiming at preventing the crowd stampede risk.

Highlights

In China, crowd stampede accidents (CSAs) have occurred within crowded areas in middle and primary schools in recent years [1,2]
The layout of staircases has an influence on the evacuation patterns of the crowd, but from a microscopic point of view, its design parameters affect the safe walking of individuals [49]
When the limbs perform instructions from the brain, there will be subtle behavioral deviations due to emotional and environmental factors, which is an important reason that distinguishes people from machines. This can be proved by the differences in the observational data from multiple trials with the same participant

Summary

Introduction

In China, crowd stampede accidents (CSAs) have occurred within crowded areas in middle and primary schools in recent years [1,2]. With regard to the evacuation in an emergency, the primary school students tend to exhibit an immature mind and low decision-making ability under diverse architectural scenes. They are considered more likely to be involved in dangerous situations. CSAs often occur in primary schools located in less developed areas [2]. Many causes that may contribute to a crowd stampede have been discussed by previous studies such as the dynamic pedestrian flow in the mass gathering area [4], crowd panic [5], individual collisions [6], obstacles [7], etc. In addition to on site video surveillance technology and the use of some human trackers [8] to capture the crowd dynamics, stampede prevention building design is addressed as another important

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