Emergency egress for the elderly in care home fire situations

Practitioners are continuing to develop egress modelling software for the design of the built environment. These models require data about human behaviour and factors for calibration, validation and verification. This study aims to address the specific data and knowledge gap: emergency egress of the elderly. Such data are difficult to collect given privacy and consent concerns, with strong relationships generally being required between residences and researchers. Through the observation of nine fire drills at six Canadian long-term care (LTC) and retirement homes, specific evacuation actions and behaviour were observed for 37 staff members and information about the evacuation of 56 residents was collected. These drills demonstrated that emergency egress in LTC and retirement homes is highly staff dependent with 72% of residents recorded requiring full assistance at all stages of movement in evacuation, and that the type of announced/unannounced drill and level of resident care will affect the type of data collected. The development of travel speed and pre-movement is discussed subject to limitation with qualitative behavioural insights of residents that were observed. This study provides valuable methodological discussion on how to conduct behavioural studies in similar highly restricted research environments. Specific attention is given to understanding the considerations that must be made when using fire drills as data sources, and the impact that these can have on using such data for modelling. This study may inform the initial setup and programming of evacuation models from an actions and behavioural perspectives of staff members and residents.     

Engineering egress data considering pedestrians with reduced mobility

To quantify the evacuation process, evacuation practitioners use engineering egress data describing the occupant movement characteristics. These data are typically based to young and fit populations. However, the movement abilities of occupants who might be involved in evacuations are becoming more variable—with the building populations of today typically including increasing numbers of individuals: with impairments or who are otherwise elderly or generally less mobile. Thus, there will be an increasing proportion of building occupants with reduced ability to egress. For safe evacuation, there is therefore a need to provide valid engineering egress data considering pedestrians with disabilities. Gwynne and Boyce recently compiled a series of data sets related to the evacuation process to support practitioner activities in the chapter Engineering Data in the SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering. This paper supplements these data sets by providing information on and presenting data obtained from additional research related to the premovement and horizontal movement of participants with physical‐, cognitive‐, or age‐related disabilities. The aim is to provide an overview of currently available data sets related to, and key factors affecting the egress performance of, mixed ability populations which could be used to guide fire safety engineering decisions in the context of building design.     

Apparent power-law distributions in animal movements can arise from intraspecific interactions

Lévy flights have gained prominence for analysis of animal movement. In a Lévy flight, step-lengths are drawn from a heavy-tailed distribution such as a power law (PL), and a large number of empirical demonstrations have been published. Others, however, have suggested that animal movement is ill fit by PL distributions or contend a state-switching process better explains apparent Lévy flight movement patterns. We used a mix of direct behavioural observations and GPS tracking to understand step-length patterns in females of two related butterflies. We initially found movement in one species (Euphydryas editha taylori) was best fit by a bounded PL, evidence of a Lévy flight, while the other (Euphydryas phaeton) was best fit by an exponential distribution. Subsequent analyses introduced additional candidate models and used behavioural observations to sort steps based on intraspecific interactions (interactions were rare in E. phaeton but common in E. e. taylori). These analyses showed a mixed-exponential is favoured over the bounded PL for E. e. taylori and that when step-lengths were sorted into states based on the influence of harassing conspecific males, both states were best fit by simple exponential distributions. The direct behavioural observations allowed us to infer the underlying behavioural mechanism is a state-switching process driven by intraspecific interactions rather than a Lévy flight.     

Application of Code Approach for Emergency Evacuation in a Rail Station

This paper presents an emergency evacuation analysis during a mid-platform train fire in an underground rail station. A time-based evacuation scenario is developed taking into account the stairway inaccessibility due to smoke blockage. The calculation approach in NFPA 130 is then applied to a parametric study of this time-based scenario and its reliability is examined using a micro-simulation model. Both methods give consistent predictions of the exiting times. The results demonstrate that with the division of the station into two zones, the exiting time could not meet the code requirements, whereas it does meet the required exiting time without the division. Such division is due to smoke blockage and creates an uneven ratio of the occupant load to the available exiting capacity. This shows that appropriate consideration of the fire and smoke effects is important for station egress evaluation. Other issues such as the fire growth rate and the pre-evacuation time are also discussed.     

水工隧洞内消能工的研究及应用进展

对于高水头、大流量的水电工程,以往的消能工具有一定的局限性,研究表明,把大面积遭受高速水流作用改为局部承受的消能方式,是高坝泄洪消能的一条有效途径。内消能工主要有孔板(洞塞)式消能工、旋流式消能工、消力井等3种形式。实践表明,内消能工对改善大坝下游水流流态,保护下游环境,保障下游边坡稳定等有积极作用,综合考虑,旋流式消能工具有较大优越性。对水工隧洞内部消能技术尚需开展进一步的研究与实践。     

弹药内弹道性能检验新方法数学模型的建立

本文对弹药内弹道性能检验的传统方法存在的问题进行了分析,提出了一种新的检验方法,重点对新的检验方法的数学模型的建立过程进行了论述。并对数学模型的精度进行了分析、检验和验证。     

基于RD算法的星载SAR斜视成像

本文研究了用距离一多普勒（ＲＤ）算法来实现星载 ＳＡＲ的斜视成像处理。给出了星载 ＳＡＲ斜视时的空间几何模型和回波信号模型，详细分析了地球自转和斜视产生的多普勒质心所引起的距离走动差异，及时域和频域校正对成像的影响，并研究了一种改进的ＲＤ算法进行距离走动的校正，此算法能适应大的斜视距离走动和地球自转距离走动。针对不同的距离走动校正进行了计算机仿真，理论分析和仿真结果表明：这种改进的ＲＤ算法是有效的。     

高装填密度装药技术中的选药计算

本文围绕叠片药这一装药技术,对某炮进行了有关选药计算,研究了制式火药与叠片药之间的弧厚配比和质量配比关系,并得出了一些有实用价值的结论.     

企业内部公关与企业形象塑造

良好的企业形象是竞争取胜的利器，内部公关是塑造良好企业形象的根本手段。本文阐述了企业内部公关对塑造良好企业形象的重要意义，探讨了实施内部公关的主要途径。