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.     

Multimodal sensing and active continuous closed‐loop feedback for achieving reliable manipulation in the outdoor physical world

The use of field robots can greatly decrease the amount of time, effort, and associated risk compared to if human workers were to carryout certain tasks such as disaster response. However, transportability and reliability remain two main issues for most current robot systems. To address the issue of transportability, we have developed a lightweight modularizable platform named AeroArm. To address the issue of reliability, we utilize a multimodal sensing approach, combining the use of multiple sensors and sensor types, and the use of different detection algorithms, as well as active continuous closed‐loop feedback to accurately estimate the state of the robot with respect to the environment. We used Challenge 2 of the 2017 Mohammed Bin Zayed International Robotics Competition as an example outdoor manipulation task, demonstrating the capabilities of our robot system and approach in achieving reliable performance in the fields, and ranked fifth place internationally in the competition.     

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.     

辽河防洪应急工程中的加筋粉细砂筑坝技术

加筋粉细砂筑坝是一门新兴技术,通过在辽河防洪应急工程右岸李家堡段应用表明,该项技术在技术上是可行的、在经济上是合理的。本文介绍了该技术在辽河防洪应急工程右岸李家堡段的应用。     

水库突发事件应急预案研究现状与关键技术初探

水库突发事件应急预案是大坝风险管理中非常重要的一个环节,是降低水库大坝风险的非工程措施.本文总结了国内水库突发事件应急预案的研究现状,并结合我国实际国情,初步提出了开展应急预案的关键技术,供大坝安全管理及科研人员参考.     

Neuronet Data Processing on the State of an Object After an Emergency

Neuronets are considered for processing data on the state of a potentially hazardous object after an emergency. An example is given of processing the data on the state of a potentially hazardous object in increments.Translated from Izmeritel’naya Tekhnika, No. 3, pp. 6–8, March, 2005.     

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.     

武钢 10000 m3/h制氧机主冷泄漏故障处理及应急保产方式

氧气生产单位保用户用气一旦出现较为紧张的局面时，如何正确处理保安全生产运行、保用户生产、安排抢修时间三者之间的关系，值得关注与研究。     

我国突发性水资源污染事故应急机制的若干问题评述

基于突发性水资源污染事故应急处理现状的分析,对目前我国突发性水资源污染事故防范和应急机制的建立进行探讨,指出当前工作中的三大缺陷,并有针对性地提出如何加快防范突发性水资源污染事故以及建立相关应急机制的进程的若干措施,包括突发污染事故的隐患调查、脆弱性评价、水质预报、动态监测以及应急组织机构等方面,以期能为我国减少突发性水资源污染事故及其损失提供一定的理论分析依据。     

高层民用建筑安全疏散及应急对策

文章从高层建筑的火灾特点出发,分析了高层民用建筑安全疏散的重要性和必要性,并结合高层民用建筑安全疏散通道因素存在的问题提出了若干对策,以求更好地满足现代高层建筑对消防安全的需要.