An Experimental Study on the Evacuation Flow of Crowd Including Wheelchair Users

Abstract

Until now, the evacuation of wheelchair users from buildings in an emergency condition, cf. a fire, has not been considered enough. In this study, we made five experiments to grasp the characteristics of crowd evacuation flow including wheelchair users. Then we intended to grasp the relative decreasing trend of a flow coefficient to the able-bodied people group. Through these experiments, we recognized as follows: 1. In the range that crowd density is 2-8 [people/m²] the flow coefficient increases as the density increases. 2. The flow coefficient decreases as the wheelchair users mixing rate in the crowd increases, but inclination of decrease becomes gradual. 3. The width of door has little effect on the flow coefficient. 4. The flow of a self-moving type wheelchair is smoother than the assisted moving type. As a result of this study, we proposed a calculating formula using ergonomics factors, personal occupation area, crowd speed and the wheelchair users mixing rate, which shows nearly the same downward tendency as our experiments indicated.