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

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.

Mapping the knowledge domain of soft computing applications for emergency evacuation studies: A scientometric analysis and critical review

“…Actually, the previous literature offers a traditional overview of the crowd modelling taxonomy (e.g., a taxonomy based on the macroscopic model, microscopic model, and mesoscopic model proposed by the Federal Highway Administration (Agnelli et al, 2015)), or the taxonomy based on continuous models and discrete models (Lu et al, 2017)). Macroscopic models (e.g., Lattice Gas and FD) analyze emergency evacuation from the whole level, aiming to explore the characteristics of crowd flow rather than the individuals (Kalogeiton et al, 2015;Xie et al, 2018). They allow studying evacuation planning and local collision conflicts in the same framework but fail to contain the influence of crowd emotions.…”

Safety Risks of Primary and Secondary Schools in China: A Systematic Analysis Using AHP–EWM Method

“…According to a World Health Organization report, most causes of death for these people aged 5-29 are accidental injury-related, including injuries from road traffic, falls, drowning, burns, poisoning, and violence [3]. For instance, a crowd stampede accident occurred at the Experimental Primary School in Puyang, China in 2017, resulting in one student dead and 22 injured [4]. A 7.5-magnitude earthquake hit Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, on 28 September 2018; more than 1500 schools collapsed and 184,000 pupils were affected [5].…”