Hypothermia Prevention during the Royal Marriage Party in the Amsterdam Arena Stadium

Abstract

IntroductionOn February 2nd 2002 the Royal Marriage between His Royal Highness Prince Willem Alexander and Maxima Zorreguita took place in Amsterdam. The evening before, a party was planned in the Amsterdam Arena for which 50 thousand guests were invited. The Amsterdam Arena is a large soccer stadium covered by a roof, the home stadium of Ajax Amsterdam (see Fig. 1). With the roof closed, there is still a total opening of approximately 160 m 2 in the roof.The guests were invited by the city and village boards in The Netherlands and were expected to consist of a representative part of the Dutch population.Since February 1st can be rather cold in The Netherlands (about 95% of the ambient temperatures are less than 10°C) and wet (rain in 57% of the days over the last 100 years) and since the temperature in the stadium is only slightly higher than the outdoor temperature, the organization feared that hypothermia might occur during the party. The guests were allowed to enter the stadium at 17.00 hours and the party would end at about 22.00 hours. This five-hour exposure, combined with the suspicion that the guests might be underdressed, made that the organization committee desired a risk analysis and an analysis of possible measures to prevent hypothermia. This analysis is described in this paper, as well as the evaluation of the actual circumstances during the party. Methods Climatic assessmentThe effect of ambient temperature and humidity on the temperature within the Arena (air volume 1 Mm 3 ) was calculated using AIDA (Liddament, 1989) and ESP-r (ESP-r, 1990). AIDA is a ventilation model for the calculation of air change rates in single zone enclosures. The calculation is based on the iterative balancing of the flow equation. The model takes into account pressure differences due to wind and temperature differences (stack pressure) and the location and size of the openings. The influence of adjacent buildings on the pressure distribution around the stadium, expressed by the wind pressure coefficient, was estimated using the Cp-generator (Knoll, 1995). The Cpgenerator is a computer model for prediction of wind pressure coefficients on facades and roofs, based on Journal of the Human-Environmental System Vol. 6; No. 1: 31-37, 2002 Hypothermia AbstractShortly before the Royal Marriage Party, on the occasion of the wedding of His Royal Highness Prince Willem Alexander and Maxima Zorreguita, took place in the Amsterdam Arena stadium, the organization realized that the audience might be exposed to cold for a considerable period and that hypothermia might occur. Therefore, the risk for hypothermia was assessed and the effect of counter-measures was calculated using thermal models. The models showed that it was not effective to place heaters in the stadium, but that reducing the ventilation rate was effective. Beer is known to enhance body cooling and was therefore prohibited during extreme cold. An entertainer tried to stimulate the audience to move in order to generate extra heat. Each visitor received a clothing r...