Research on Risk Identification and Evaluation of Large-Scale

Activities

Quanmin Bu

and

Yuehong Xu

Department of Security Studies, Jiangsu Police Institute, Nanjing 210031, China

Institute of Higher Education, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210048, China

Keywords: Large-Scale Activities, Risk Analysis, Evaluation.

Abstract: With the rapid economic development and the acceleration of urbanization, China is organising and hosting

larger-scale events more frequently. However as large-scale events are likely to cause death and injury of

people, safety has increasingly become an issue of social concern. In this article, the author analyses risks

factors like environment, personnel, technology, and organizational management, and construct a risk

evaluation index system for large-scale activities. By using fault tree analysis method, disasters and their

consequences can be effectively predicted through this system. It can provide theoretical support for the

avoidance, transfer and control for large-scale activities, minimize the possibility of hazards and accidents, to

the greatest extent protect the safety of people, property and even national interests, and thus maintain social

order and stability.

1 INTRODUCTION

With the 29th Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010

Shanghai World Expo, more and more large-scale

events can meet the material and spiritual needs of

the public and help enhance China's influence and

competitiveness in the world. But since these

activities are easily affected by factors of nature,

human beings, technology, economy, and politics

and so on, they are likely to cause casualties.

Therefore, the safety of these activities has become a

social concern. (Zhang, Xu, Xiang Zhang 2019)

Therefore, the risk factor analysis of large-scale

activities and the evaluation of the analysis results, as

well as the corresponding countermeasures and

suggestions are of great significance.

2 CHARACTERISTICS AND

CURRENT SITUATION OF

LARGE-SCALE ACTIVITIES

2.1 Characteristics

According to the second paragraph of the second

provision of "Regulations on safety management of

large-scale social activities in Beijing city”, large-

scale social activities refer to group activities in

which the organizers rent or use sites in other ways

for public performance, sports competition,

exhibition, fair, job fair, exhibit of lanterns (Yaju,

Tsubaki 2019). Large-scale activities have the

following specific characteristics:

(1) A large number of participants. In this case,

once any contradiction and friction occur, it can

easily lead to accident, such as chaos and heavy

casualty.

(2) Venue is not fixed, and many security risks.

Large-scale social activities do not have fixed places,

some are in rented venues, and some are held in parks,

plazas and even on public roads. The safety level and

fire protection level of these places directly affect the

safety of large-scale events. Large-scale events

usually require redecoration, which will lead to more

security risks and unimaginable consequences.

(3) Large-scale social events have complexity and

high rate of suddenness. In the event of an accident,

it may cause a chain reaction, along with other

accidents. For large-scale activities in enclosed

spaces, due to the high population density, if a fire

occurs, secondary disasters such as building collapse

and crowd trampling caused by delayed evacuation

and unqualified construction quality will increase the

impact of the accident accordingly.

Bu, Q. and Xu, Y.

Research on Risk Identiﬁcation and Evaluation of Large-Scale Activities.

DOI: 10.5220/0011767200003607

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Public Management, Digital Economy and Internet Technology (ICPDI 2022), pages 753-759

ISBN: 978-989-758-620-0

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

753

(4) Large-scale activities are diverse in content

and complex in form. The content of large-scale

social activities is very extensive, covering almost all

aspects of social life. Some activities even integrate

culture, business and other aspects with rich contents.

As far as the form of large-scale activities is

concerned, there are cultural performances, sports

competitions, business talks, exhibitions, lantern

festivals and celebrations, etc. (

Willis, Elviss, Aird,

Fenelon, Mc Lauchlin 2012

)

The characteristics of large-scale social activities

increase the difficulty of the security of large-scale

social activities. It can be said that the safety of most

large-scale social activities is caused by human. In

supervision and management process of large-scale

social activities, if the organizers, managers and

participants are able to pay attention to safety issues

and perform their duties with due diligence, many

accidents can be avoided.

2.2 Current Situation

According to statistics, from 1983 to 2004, there were

37 accidents in large cultural and sports activities in

our country, with 686 persons dead, 1376 persons

injured, including 6 buildings collapsed, accounting,

8 evacuation and lighting accidents, accounting, 2

accidents related to the weather factors and crowded

stampede, 18 accidents related to crowded stampede

caused by excessive number of audience and

negligence of workers, and 3 accidents related to

sports riot, accounting respectively for 16.21%,

21,62%, 5.4%, 48.64% and, 8.1%. They are really

painful lessons. The cause of the accident is shown in

the figure 1 below.

According to the data of large-scale social

activity accidents promulgated by relevant state

departments, more than half of them have safety

problems in site designing and building quality, and

20% of those activities have problems in fire doors

and fire hydrant facilities, 40% of them have

problems in safety channel width and exit sign, 25%

of them have irregularities in electric inspection,

lamps, electrical wiring installation, and 15% of them

have problems in safety assessment of special

equipment and stage height. The cause of the accident

is shown in the figure2 below.

In addition, the lack of investment in safety,

safety responsibilities, and the rule of safety law all

make the holding of large-scale social events in our

country at this stage have safety hazards.

Figure 1: Cause of the Accident.

Figure 2: Cause of the Accident.

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Research on the assessment of risks of large-scale

activities in China is far behind the western

developed countries, basic theories, methods and

application software of risk evaluation have been in

place in those countries, but systematic standards

have not be established, their key techniques and

methods are highly confidential. (Sun, Guo, Dong

Chen 2016) Although China has initially gained some

results of theoretical research and practical

experience, the introduction of risk evaluation in

large-scale activities is still at the exploratory stage,

Risk assessments are mainly carried out for a few

influential official large-scale events (such as the

Olympic Games and World Expos) by the public

security organs, but rarely conducted for average

official large-scale events, and almost no assessments

are conducted for non-governmental large-scale

events.

First of all, there are many problems in related

laws in China. Relevant laws and regulations only

define performance direction of large-scale events.

They have not been implemented in practical work of

risk evaluation. As a result, there are not

implementation standards and codes in practical

work. Take folk activities as an example:

For folk activities, according to the third

provision of "Regulations on safety management of

large public events”, organizers need to be

responsible for large mass activities, and the

government need to take on the supervision role.

According to the 4th provision, public security

organs above the county level shall be responsible for

safety management of large-scale mass activities, but

the subject of risk assessment of large-scale events is

not clearly defined. Secondly, public security organs

in China have some problems in practical operation.

(Wang 2016)

Over the years, public security organs

mainly adopt the empirical mode in management of

large-scale activities, public security organs in

different regions have different safety requirements,

which make organizers of large-scale activities

confused. Meanwhile, the police's understanding

towards the risk assessment model is not deep

enough, so it has no practical significance.

3 ACCIDENT RISK ANALYSIS

OF LARGE-SCALE EVENTS

Risk refers to the possibility of certain loss under a

particular environment during a certain period of

time. Risk is composed of risk factors, risk accidents

and risk loss. In other words, the gap between

people’s desired objective and actual result during a

certain period of time is called risk. In 1991, "Light

of Coal Sea" exhibition was held at Yangzi Park in

Taiyuan city, Shanxi. Due to poor ticket

management, 10,000 people poured into a park that

could only accommodate 40,000 people. Participants

squeezed each other, which caused a person was

tripped over a stone bridge, and thus resulted in 106

deaths and 98 injuries.

At the night of the Lantern Festival in Beijing city

in February 5, 2004, a Spring Festival Lantern

Exhibition was held in Miyun County, and there

occurred the crowded stampede, with 37 persons

died, and 37 persons injured on the rainbow bridge,

due to the poor leadership and fulfillment of

management responsibilities.

On January 12, 2006, crowded stampede occurred

in Hajj, Saudi Arabia when the pilgrims were

attending a religious activity, at least 345 people were

killed, and 289 persons injured.

On February 14th, 2010, a Spring Festival

Temple Fair was held in Suiyang District of Shangqiu

city. The Qilu Disabled Art Troupe came to the stage

to perform. The stand collapsed, causing 1 death and

13 injuries, with the direct property losses of more

than 420,000 yuan and compensation for 180,000

yuan.

In the evening of January 14, 2011, a major

stampede accident took place in the southwest of

Kerala, India, killing at least 109 people and injuring

dozens of persons. Before the incident, the local India

Christians were celebrating a religious festival. (Sun,

Tan, Hao, Yan 2016)

From the above cases, it can be found that large-

scale social activities have the following risk factors:

3.1 Environmental Risk Factors

(1) Natural environment. Natural factors refer to

heavy rain, snow, typhoon, earthquake, tsunamis and

other natural disasters that have great impact on large

social activities during the period of organization. For

example, during opening ceremony of Shanghai

Tourism Festival which was held in September, 2002,

The sudden rainstorm caused great damage to the

main power control circuit, which made all the

lighting and sound equipment unavailable, and the

event had to be postponed, causing huge economic

and reputation losses to the organizer (People's

Government of Huangpu District) and the contractor

(a Polish businessman).

(2) Surrounding environment. The surrounding

environment directly affects the safety of large-scale

social activities. If the public security of the

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neighboring area is good, the traffic is in good

condition, community members have an active

cooperation and support large-scale social activities

in aspects of site selection and logistics, all these will

greatly improve the quality of large-scale social

activities. If the public security situation is not good,

it is very likely that someone will commit robbery,

assault and other illegal and criminal activities in

large-scale social activities, which will seriously

affect the normal conduct of large-scale social

activities.

(3) Social environment. When hosting some far-

reaching social events such as the Olympics, it is

necessary to fully take the economic strength and

political environment of the host country into account.

According to the social risk pre-warning system

proposed by Prof. Linfei Song, social risks include:

income stability, polarization between the rich and

the poor, unemployment, inflation, corruption, social

security and unexpected events. In this article, mainly

local employment rate, crime rate and income were

considered.

3.2 Factors of Personnel Risk

The human is the subject of large-scale social

activities, in which a large number of people gather

and flow in large-scale social activities during a short

period of time. Poor safety consciousness of the

public means a new challenge to the security of major

events.

Personnel risk factors in large social activities

include: personnel density, flow of persons,

characteristics of human beings and their

psychology, personnel’s safety awareness, and

technical risk factors.

(1) Personnel density. The main reason for fire,

riot, stampede and other serious consequences in

large-scale social activities is high personnel density.

High personnel density affects the normal operation

of equipment and sites, and even causes damage to

the equipment, sites and order, and at the same time,

increasing risk of all the unsafe factors and hidden

dangers, even causing the occurrence of accident.

(2) Flow of persons. Some people are highly

mobile and have a dynamic impact on the activity

guarantee system. Therefore, it is necessary to

consider the population as a whole and analyze the

impact of its mobility characteristics on the accident.

First, different directions of flow: clustering

phenomenon is caused by different directions of flow.

(Liu 2017) People from different directions crowded

on roads, bridges, stair intersections, entrances and

exits, causing confusion and congestion. Second,

flow speed. Collision and stampede are likely to

occur when the activity is over and the channel is

open.

(3) Characteristics of human beings and their

psychology. Participants of large-scale social events

have different crowd characteristics, and some people

are mixed. For example, festivals and carnivals are

composed of families, couples, young people, old

people, etc., Participants like businessmen and

professionals of some activities have simple

backgrounds. Since large-scale social activities

generally occur when participants are not well

prepared, and they tend to lose rationality because of

panic and show herd mentality and desperation

psychology, causing more confusions and even an

accident. (Ku 2017) Although the crowd has many

characteristics, it is necessary to take precautions in

advance to prepare for emergencies.

According to mental states of population,

accidents can be divided into "escape disaster" type

and "scramble" type. The cause of "escape disaster"

accident is a sudden disaster. Because the process is

generally very short, unprepared people are often

frightened, lose their minds for a while, show

conformity and despair, and cause more chaos and

even accidents. In "scramble" type accident, people

are initially sober, they have clear objectives, and this

can make the occurrence of danger more likely.

In case of fire and crowd stampede when people

are in a state of panic, people’s behaviors have the

following characteristics:

①People's behaviors are less affected by laws

and morals, showing crazy behaviors.

②People are very nervous, resulting in a number

of blindly behaviors, such as blindly following the

crowd without making their own judgments.

③Individuals try to move at abnormal speed.

④The crowd have more physical touch.

⑤The panicky crowd may congregate in one exit

when there are more than one evacuation exits, while

other exits are rarely used and even be completely

ignored.

(4) Personnel’s safety awareness. Security

awareness is people’s correct estimates and

judgments towards dangers that may exist in the

environment. It can help people get out of danger as

much as possible. Safety skills enable people to

understand the nature and extent of danger and take

correct measures to protect themselves and others

when encountering danger. At present, the low

quality of public safety is an important reason for

accidents and a major factor in increasing losses.

Poor safety awareness and weak safety skill among

the public are the important reasons, and lack of self-

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aid skill is the main reason, and the poor safety

consciousness among managers is also one of the

causes of many tragedies.

(5) Technical risk factors. Technical risks of

large-scale social events are mainly venue,

equipment and facilities. They are tools to make

events go smoothly. The risks include design risk,

layout risk and equipment decoration risk. There may

be safety issues in the design of large-scale social

event venues, such as unclear fire-fighting equipment,

fire doors and hydrants, unreasonable design of

safety passages, and unclear signs of safe exits and

facilities. (Zhang, Jiang, Li, Ma, Yang, Yang 2018)

The impacts of equipment and facilities on large-

scale social activities are mainly reflected in two

aspects: First, the poor reliability of buildings and

public facilities may lead to the collapse of building

structures and electrical fires. Second, the poor

evacuating ability of evacuation facilities which can

lead to blocking of the crowd and crowd stampede

accident.

3.3 Organization and Management

Factors

(1) Crowd management. Improper crowd control can

lead to highly intensive population, and is the main

hidden danger for stampede. Crowd management

should include personnel capacity calculation,

personnel control, peak point, crowded point,

duration budget, personnel number control, crowd

guidance, information dissemination, evacuation

program development, panicky crowd management.

(2) Emergency Treatment. Crowded places need

to make emergency preparations, formulate scientific

and reasonable emergency plans, ensure that they

have sufficient emergency response capabilities, and

make adequate arrangements for emergency

measures and emergency personnel organization.

(Mansukhani 2015) In some events, improper

emergency treatment increase the risk of accident, for

example, in a riot in a soccer field of Congo in 2004,

the police set off tear gas, which caused a stampede

tragedy.

(3) Information Management. Error message can

lead to blind flow of the crowd, and it is one of the

important reasons for rumor spreading. Information

communication can be divided into information

communication between the management and the

crowd and that among the crowd.

① Management and information management. If

managers fail to convey, or convey incorrect or

incomplete information, failing to prevent the spread

of misinformation, this may cause a stampede. The

managers should convey the following information in

a timely and accurate manner: general information

such as time of activities, content arrangement,

evacuation routes, emergency exits information,

temporary change information, such as performance

delay, cancellation, change, relevant

recommendation, warning, etc.

② Information communication among the crowd.

The crowd can be seen as a series of units, it is

difficult for its members to understand the whole

group, and this increases the likelihood of unsafe

behaviors. In some accidents, the front part of the

crowd is intensive and can’t move, but the part in the

back do not know that and go on moving forward.

The management should provide relevant

information about the crowd and guide them to

maintain a good order.

4 ACCIDENT RISK

ASSESSMENT OF

LARGE-SCALE ACTIVITIES

4.1 Content and the Indicator System

of Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is a qualitative or quantitative

analysis of risks that exit in large-scale social

activities on the basis of risk identification, and

sorting of influence degree of risks on activity targets.

In this paper, the author establishes an evaluation

index system of risk factors for large-scale activities

with environmental factors, human factors, technical

factors, organizational factors as the evaluation

content.

4.2 Risk Assessment Method- the

Accident Tree Analysis Method

According to the characteristics of large-scale

activities, the severity of hazards and harmful factors,

and the possibility of accidents, the scientific,

reasonable and applicable risk assessment methods

can be selected. On the basis of different criteria, risk

assessment methods can be divided into qualitative

analysis method, quantitative analysis method, and

semi quantitative analysis method. Those methods

have branch methods, for example, qualitative

evaluation method mainly includes fault tree analysis

method, brainstorming method, Delphic method, and

subjective probability method. In this paper, mainly

fault tree analysis method is used in analyzing and

evaluating of risks of large-scale activities.

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757

Fault tree analysis method is also called accident

tree analysis method, by which causes for the

occurrence of the accident are analyzed until the

basic causes (bottom events) of the accident is found.

These bottom events are also called basic events, and

their data may be known or have statistics or

experimental results. The fault tree analysis method

can realize the identification and assessment of

various system risks. It can not only analyze the

direct reason of the accident, but also reveal potential

cause of the accident. It is intuitive, clear and logical

in describing the casual relationship of the accident.

It can be used in both qualitative analysis and

quantitative analysis, and is one of the important

analysis methods in safety system engineering. The

basic steps are as follows:

(1) Determine the target system and the specific

incident (top-level event) to be analyzed.

(2) Determine the probability of accidents in

large-scale social activities and the safety target value

of accident losses.

(3) Investigate the causes of events. Investigate all

direct causes and factors related to the accident.

Prepare a fault tree. Find all the reason events

from the top events, until the basic reason events, and

draw the fault tree based on the logic relation.

(4) Qualitative analysis. Conduct simplification

according the structure of the fault tree, obtain

minimal cut sets and the minimal path sets, and

determine the structure importance of each basic

event.

(5) Quantitative analysis. Obtain the probability

of each basic event, calculate the probability of the

top events, and obtain important degree and the

critical importance degree.

(6) Conclusion. When the probability of the

accident exceeds a predetermined target value, find

out all possible solutions for reducing the probability

of the accident from minimum cut sets, find out the

best solution from the minimum path sets, then

determine the key point and sequence of

countermeasures based on degree of importance, then

bet analysis and assessment results.

However, in this paper, because of the lack of

necessary data on the probability of the accident, it is

difficult to carry out quantitative analysis with fault

tree analysis method, so mainly qualitative analysis

method is used. Assuming stampede is the top event,

firstly, analyze the fault tree for the occurrence of the

accident figure.

5 CONCLUSION

5.1 Risk Aversion

Risk aversion refers to that an organization carries

out a systematic analysis on hidden dangers and the

probability of a major accident before any large-scale

activities, and make decision on whether to organize

based on the analysis results.

If the organizer cannot or do not want to assume

the responsibility for the accident, the activity should

be canceled or be replaced by other activity. This

method is quite suitable for activities that have high

risks or those that produce serious consequences.

Nowadays, some large-scale social activities are

canceled or held in another place, this is a kind of risk

avoidance behavior. For example, the world cup

opening ceremony in Germany in 2006 was canceled

due to certain reasons, and the performance which

was scheduled in the Olympic movement floor was

held in Brandenburg, this was due to FIFA’s decision

with intention of avoiding risks.

5.2 Risk Transfer

Risk transfer refers to that the organizer transfer risks

to other organizations and individuals through

signing contract or other means. Generally speaking,

risk transfer methods can be divided into financial

non-insurance transfer and financial insurance

transfer. Financial non-insurance transfer refers to the

transfer of risks and risk-related financial results to

others by signing economic contracts. Financial

insurance transfer refers to the transfer of risks to

insurance company through signing insurance

contract and paying a premium. Once the expected

risk occur and cause any loss, the insurer must make

economic compensation within the responsibility

scope of the contract. For example, the stand collapse

accident in Faye Wong’s concert in Chongqing city

makes many performance organizations aware of the

importance of public liability insurance. In general,

the organizer will buy accident injury insurance for

actors, singers and staff (including handling

personnel), and accident insurance for the audience.

In this way, the organizer transfer risks to other

parties. It is necessary to abide by relevant laws and

regulations when signing those insurance contracts.

5.3 Risk Control

Risk control refers that the organizer takes various

measures and methods to eliminate or reduce risks, or

the possibilities of events, or reduce loss caused by

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accidents. Risk control is the core of risk

management. People should be aware of the

existence of risks, and take preventive measures that

are effective and legitimate, thereby reducing the

possibility of injury accident and negative effects and

loss caused by the accident. The specific content

includes risk assessment, formulation of emergency

plans, strengthening employee safety education and

training, carrying out emergency drills, equipment

and site maintenance, strengthening safety

supervision and management, sorting and storing

various data, and handling related accident lawsuits.

Taking a solo concert as an example, once the event

is canceled due to bad weather, the organizers and the

audience will suffer great economic loss. From the

perspective of risk management, the following

methods can be adopted. The first is to avoid it.

Outdoor concerts have strict requirements on weather

conditions, which require accurate understanding of

historical weather data to avoid severe weather

conditions. The second is to reduce or eliminate risks,

the organizers can take effective measures to reduce

the impact of weather, such as offering rain gear to

the audience. Finally, consider risk transfer and risk

financing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was financially supported by the Key

research and development plan projects of Jiangsu

Province (BE2018716).

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