The Importance of Crowd Control in Order to Act Properly in Case of Evacuation - Research Proposal Example

Research Proposal A large crowd of people may become very critical to control in evacuation of the building during emergency. In many situations, people have died and many injured not because of the catastrophe but due to someone’s behavior in a crowd during emergency. This occurs often when everyone thrives to reach a common goal; to evacuate the building. People tend to agree mentally during evacuation and are always ready to be led to a safe place in that if one person decides to run to another direction, they all follow him or her not knowing if there is an exit or not. While this takes place they push one another causing a stampede while others push their fellows away and step on others (Da Silva et al. 2003). Those fallen down form a barrier to exit as a crowd build up at the entrance preventing an effective evacuation from taking place. Some people within the crowd may not be able to move fast because of disability of being intoxicated. Over two-thirds of many injuries or half dead are caused by delayed safety activities of individuals. Some instead of evacuating leave the crowd to fight the fire, some attempt to save others while others move to unsafe place in the building (Erica, 2008). This is the reason why crowd control during emergency is very important to minimize or avoid death and injuries. According to Still (2000), a crowd needs to be controlled to improve people’s ability to survive during emergency. There is need to adapt methods for controlling crowds during emergency situations and to ensure proper action during evacuation. Many injuries and deaths have been reported to have happened during crown evacuation in emergency situations. Despite the fact that some measures have been put in place to reduce the number of injuries and deaths, no satisfying difference has been made. There is therefore a need to assess the importance of crowd control during emergency. Crowd control measures should be implemented to act properly in case of evacuation. The general objective of this study is to assess the importance of crowd control in order to act properly in case of evacuation. The specific objectives are; (i) to assess how crowd evacuation model can effectively control the crowd during emergency, (ii) to establish how effective crowd controller involvement is in controlling a crowd during emergency, (ii) to determine how evacuation policy ensures effective crowd control during emergency, (iii) to assess how education and training can effectively control the crowd during emergency. The research questions for the study would be; (i) how does crowd evacuation model effectively control the crowd during emergency? (ii) how effective is the crowd controller involvement in controlling a crowd during emergency?, (iii) how does evacuation policy ensure effective crowd control during emergency?, and (iv) how does education and training effectively control the crowd during emergency? Proper crowd control is very important during emergency as it saves lives and minimizes injuries. Besides that this study will be important to organizations, government, fire officers and researchers. Businesses and other organizations will be able to understand crowd control and its importance and pass the message to its employees as well as put necessary measures in case of emergency. The government is always concerned about the welfare of its people. It ensures that citizens are protected and stay safe. This study will give them insight in putting up measures in controlling crowd properly during emergency. Fire officers will be well equipped on how to handle a crowd during evacuation in case of an emergency. Other researchers will use this study as their reference in their further researches. In the process of carrying out this study, several constraints are anticipated and they include access of secondary data, time and primary data collection method. Limited access to relevant literature may not give the necessary information needed to enrich the study and expound on an already done research. As a precaution to minimize this constraint, internet will be used mostly to obtain/collect secondary data following its availability in written sources. The time allocated for the research might not be enough to exhaust everything. As a precaution a time line table will be drawn up with each activity allocated target time. Since the researcher intends to use observation in controlling primary data, it can be very challenging. The researcher may observe the phenomena and he may never see what he is study and thus wasting time. Attitudes can’t be seen but can only be inference by observing behaviors. Observation will thus be used where necessary. Figure 1.1: Conceptual framework Independent Variables Dependent Variable Crowd evacuation models involve established pre-defined behaviors that are supposed to be exhibited by individuals. Programmed crowd model involves defining behavior rules that is coming up with rule-based behaviors. The guided method of crowd control reduces the average escape time and increases the chances of survival of individuals during emergency situation. Crowd controllers should be involved decision making. Each employee should be given an evacuation policy and their employers in order to be well equipped during emergency. Building occupants, crowd controllers as well as evacuation teams should be trained on measures to be taken during emergency. In the research design and methodology, this research will examine the importance of crowd control in order to act properly during evacuation. The study will use descriptive method with the intention of employing data to justify the current situation in practices to make more intelligent plans to improve them. In trying to find out models that can be used to effectively control crowds during evacuation; the research will depend on both primary and secondary data. The data to be used in this study will be collected using observation and document analysis. Unobtrusive observations will be used to mean that individuals will not be aware that the researcher is watching them or observing them. A representative sample will take place to generalize the findings. Document analysis will be used to make empirical observation using the available documents, statistics, reports, and other written, visual or oral materials. The study will use a qualitative technique to analyze data. This was done by classifying and the tabling of each observation separately to determine the frequency. Frequency distribution tables will be used to present findings. Primary and secondary data will both be collected after which it will be analyzed to facilitate further formatting. The propose research time line will be as follows: PROPOSED TIME LINE Time Aim 1st – 2nd month Write research proposal Start literature search Start compiling reference list/Bibliography Research on annual seminar for degrees candidates 2nd – 3rd Month Produce an introduction draft Produce preliminary pages Start on thesis literature review 3rd – 5th month Complete the method section Data collection and analysis Continuation of literature review writing 5th – 6th month Data collection completion Data entry and analysis completion 6th – 7th month Write results and discussion 6th – 7th month. Edit Thesis, submission of thesis and final review. Reference List Borgan DC. Et al. 1998 Dynamically simulating characters in virtual environments. In IEEE C.G.A., 18(5):58-69. City of Cincinnati 1980 Crowd Management: Report of the Task Force on Crowd Control and Safety, Technical Report. Da Silva A. et al. 2003. PetroSim-A framework to simulate crowds’ behavior in panic situations. International workshop on modeling and applied simulation, Bereggi, Italy. Erica D.2008. Modeling Human Behavior during Building Fires . National Institute of Standards and Technology Fire Safety Engineering Group 2003. Building Exodus: the evacuation Model for the Building Environment Garat F. et al. 1999. Guiding and interacting with virtual crowds in real time. Proceedings of workshop Euro graphics computer animation and simulation. Milan, Italy Greenwood, T. 1998 Guide to Fire Precautions in Existing Places of Entertainment and Like Premise, HMSO, London, and (ISBN 0113409079) Han, C.S., Kunz, J. and Law, K.H., 1998 “A Hybrid Prescriptive/Performance Based Approach to Automated Building Code Checking,” International Computing Congress, ASCE, pp. 537-548, Boston, MA. Helbing, D., Farkas, I., and Vicsek, T. 2000 “Simulating Dynamical Features of Escape Panic,” Nature, 407:487-490. Jeffrey S. et al. 2007. Egress design solutions: a guide to evacuation and crowd management planning. John Wiley and Sons, Lystad, M. 1988. Mental Health Response to Mass Emergencies: Theory and Practice, Brunner/Mazel, New York. Musse SR 2000. Human Crowd Modelling with Various Levels of Behavior Control. PhD thesis, EPFL, Lausanne. Musse SR. et al. 1997. A model of human crowd behavior: Group inter-relationship and collision detection analysis. Proc. Workshop of computer animation and simulation of Euro graphics, Budapest. 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