Level of Safety Concept for Major Events

Abstract

Most of the international guidelines for the dimensioning of pedestrian traffic facilities are built on the ‘Level of Service’ concept. It is well suited for a lot of traffic conditions like unidirectional pedestrian flows on pavements or in corridors. However, the concept reaches its limit in case of more complex situations like bi- and multi-directional streams, e.g. at railway stations, airports or large public events. Several disasters in context of large public events revealed the lack of applicable rules. The deficit is explainable against the background of missing experience. Neither emergency forces and responsible authorities nor researchers in the area of pedestrian dynamics have a valid database to describe multi-directional streams in high densities. As part of the research project ‘BaSiGo—Bausteine für die Sicherheit von Großveranstaltungen’, large-scale laboratory experiments with about 2,000 pedestrians have been conducted in 2013. The aim of the work is to convert the ‘Level of Service’ concept into a ‘Level of Safety’ concept for large public events. A first approach for the new concept, based on a traffic light system (green, yellow, red), is presented in this article.