The Safety Assessment Of Subway's Walking Spaces

The stampede accidents of high-density pedestrian have called people's attention a lot these years. Because of the high quantity and density, the stampede accidents happened more and more all over the world. The characteristics of this kind of accident are the limited walking space and over-high density of pedestrian, and these are the same characteristics of subway stations. Along with the faster paces of developing subway system, Shanghai has to face the conflict of the growing numbers of passengers and the limited subway stations. This conflict can cause great danger about passengers in subway stations. The safety assessment of subway station can offer a method to analyze the safety level of spaces in the subway station, in order to support designers and managers to find out the danger in advance and to enhance the safety level of subway stations.Based on a lot of work and study about pedestrian safety, experiments and observations, this thesis analyzes three factors which can influence the safety level of subway stations: pedestrian organization, pedestrian walking behavior and the exit location design. And the methods of assessment are established from these three factors. This thesis contains six chapters: firstly, the study about pedestrian safety is summed up, and at the same time the content of this thesis is clearly indicated. The safety problem about passengers' organization is analyzed in chapter two, and the method to assess the safety level of passenger cross flow is developed; the walking behavior characteristics are analyzed in chapter three, and the method to assess the hazard probability is developed; the safety level of different exit location design is analyzed in chapter four, and the method to assess the safety level of different exit location design is developed; then in chapter five there is a example about People Square Station in Shanghai, from this example the methods of assessment are clearly indicated; finally, the disadvantage of this thesis and the future development are suggested in chapter six. Besides, this thesis has established the relationship between pedestrian cross flow's conflict probability and space per person; also the relationship between buffer distance and walking speed; and the calculation of evacuation distanceof different exit location design.