Evacuation of aged persons from inundated underground space.

ABSTRACT

Underground is an important space that supports function of cities, such as subways, shopping malls and basement parking. However in consequence a new type of disaster, the "urban flood" menaces these spaces. In the last decade, urban floods struck Tokyo, Nagoya and Fukuoka. When underground inundation occurs, people must evacuate to the ground as soon as possible. But, when such an inundation situation happens, aged persons may not be able to evacuate quickly to ground level. In this paper, the method of safety assessment for aged persons is discussed on the experimental results and flood simulation data in an underground space. As a criterion of the safety evacuation, the specific force per unit width is used in this study. From the result of experiments, it is difficult to implement safety evacuation when the specific force per unit width is over 0.100 m(2) for the aged male.