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.     

摩擦换向抽油机悬点运动分析计算

摩擦换向抽油机采用开关磁阻电动机或变频调速电动机,其特点是可以频繁双向旋转,带动摩擦轮正反转,实现光杆的上行下行。该抽油机运动特点与游梁式抽油机运动特点有较大区别,文章分析了摩擦换向抽油机的运动特点,给出了该机悬点位移、速度、加速度的计算方法。     

一种通用型的目标数据仿真

给出了一种通用型的雷达目标模拟器 ,它能够方便直观的产生各种特征的三维目标轨迹 ,可实时离散出目标点迹 ,为雷达数据处理及精度分析提供数据来源。目标轨迹由一组特征点定义 ,修改方便 ,应用灵活     

多跨简支曲线轨道折线梁桥空间振动分析模型

提出了一种多跨简支曲线轨道折线梁桥的空间振动分析模型,采用20自由度的梁段单元,可方便考虑T型梁横向与竖向弯曲、自由扭转、约束扭转等变形,选取正交流动坐标,建立了曲线轨道折线梁桥的动力特性矩阵,特别适用于曲线轨道折线梁桥与列车的空间振动分析。在实例研究中,计算了提速列车通过32m曲线轨道折线梁桥时的空间振动响应,并检算该桥是否具有足够的刚度及良好的运营平稳性,可供有关部门参考。     

停棒子系统与控制棒组操作范围监测试验

本文叙述了反应堆保护系统停棒与汽轮机降功率子系统的系统功能、保护参数和秦山核电站控制棒组插入监测器的设计与参数选择,确定了控制棒提升上极限值和在不同工况下棒插入低位、低-低位整定值,并在热态零功率条件下加以验证。试验证明参数选择是合理的,为功率运行阶段提供了数据。     

LMG200型可调高滚筒式露天采煤机

介绍了可调高滚筒式露天采煤机的结构特点及在露天煤矿应用所产生的效益和其广 阔的发展前景。     

洞庭湖流域某些水库,泉水和自然保护区环境水内的铀水平

一、前言 水库水,泉水,河水和大气降水等这些环境水与人类生活有着密切关系。水中天然放射性铀水平的研究因其化学毒性和放射性的双重危害是有实际意义的。洞庭湖流域处于我国亚热带湿润气候区,雨量充沛,矿产及水资源十分丰富。过去几年已对洞庭湖流域247000km~2湘、资、沅、澧各水系铀的水环境背景值,湘江的放射性水平和湘江流域大气降水中的痕量铀进行了研究。本文利用裂变径迹分析方法测定了洞庭湖流域的某些水库和泉水以及该     

伊朗德黑兰地铁轨道施工方法

依托伊朗德黑兰地铁一、二号线工程 ,针对地铁单洞单线采用的轨道施工轨排法存在的不足 ,根据单洞双线隧道的特点 ,提出了利用组装好的轨排直接铺设在隧道结构底板上作为轨道平板车临时轨道的施工新方法