(A275) Experimental Crowd Packing Analysis in Mass Gathering

Abstract

Introduction

Medical assistance for mass gathering can be classified based on the characteristics of mass gathering into primary or emergency health care for individual patient vs. medical assistance for public in case of disastrous mass gathering. It is necessary to prepare primary and emergency health care in case of routine mass gathering, but when an accident or event occurs, different medical approach will be necessary. One of the representative types of accident or event is crowd packing which can make high pressure among mass gathering participants usually from crowd rush or surge. This study was performed for identifying the characteristics of crowd packing in mass gathering.

Methods

The literature survey was performed on mass gathering and crowd packing. Human model simulation was done as a pilot study and 2-dimensional pedestrian pressure experiment was performed with volunteer students and pressure sensing device by video recording and analysis. Lateral shoulder loading and frontal chest loading were analyzed per load cell and per packed condition.

Results

As pushing pressure increased, the body was rotated to 90 degree after some threshold pressure point. The maximal and average pressures among volunteers were extracted. Pedestrian injury criteria(PIC) curve was generated.

Conclusions

When crowd packing occurs, the body will be rotated about 90 degree after some threshold pressure point. And then interpersonal pressure will be increased to crush injury as crowd packing proceed. For defining the interpersonal pressure to mortality and critical injury, further research will be needed reflecting real human physiology and anatomy.