Dependences between the parameters of human flows during evacuation from mosques

Abstract

A large number of parishioners in the mosque determines the need to secure their safety in case of fire. For this purpose, there are defined the demographic of people in the mosque (over 95 per cent of working age) and the rate (0.6 m² of area per one praying person of the total area of the mosque that is vacant from equipment and the elements of the decoration of the hall). The peculiarity of the evacuation process from mosques is the high number of people, the low time of the beginning of evacuation (4-5 sec) and, as a consequence, momentary formation of streams with high density. Based on the established in the theory of human flows of methods conducting observations on location mosques of Moscow, a series of observations on location had been conducted in the days of their highest point of parishioners. As a result of the research, based on more than 1500 measurements, the dependences between the parameters of the human flow V_D = φ( D ) for the first time had been established during its movement along the observed way during the evacuation from the mosques. The high theoretical correlation ratios obtained in all the presented dependences (η_t = 0.999) determine the established ties practically as functional (η_t = 1.0), which indicates on the presence of the strong correlational tie between the speed of parishioners movement and the density of the flow. It is established that in order to provide free evacuation, the width of the exits should be set in proportion to the width in the shoulders of the people that make it up (b = 0.9 m), but not less than the width of the wheelchair (b = 0.9 m). In such a way the width of the doorway must be at least 0.9, 1.2, 1.8, 2.4 m etc. In mosques, as a rule, the evacuation time is determined by the time of movement through the door openings. The maximum intensity of movement through the doorway is determined as a result of the experiments lower by 14.5 per cent than the data existing today in the standards. This is due to the physiological and demographic changes observed in last decades in the structure of the population.