Citation

Lovreglio R, Ronchi E, Maragkos G, Beji T, Merci B. J. Hazard. Mater. 2016; 318: 758-771.

Affiliation

Department of Flow, Heat and Combustion Mechanics, Ghent University-UGent, Belgium.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jhazmat.2016.06.015

PMID

27343142

Abstract

The release of toxic gases due to natural/industrial accidents or terrorist attacks in populated areas can have tragic consequences. To prevent and evaluate the effects of these disasters different approaches and modelling tools have been introduced in the literature. These instruments are valuable tools for risk managers doing risk assessment of threatened areas. Despite the significant improvements in hazard assessment in case of toxic gas dispersion, these analyses do not generally include the impact of human behaviour and people movement during emergencies. This work aims at providing an approach which considers both modelling of gas dispersion and evacuation movement in order to improve the accuracy of risk assessment for disasters involving toxic gases. The approach is applied to a hypothetical scenario including a ship releasing Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) on a crowd attending a music festival. The difference between the results obtained with existing static methods (people do not move) and a dynamic approach (people move away from the danger) which considers people movement with different degrees of sophistication (either a simple linear path or more complex behavioural modelling) is discussed.

Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language: en