Assessing Individual Evacuation Performance Moving on Long Stairs in a Subway Station: A Field Experiment

This study examined individual ascent and descent performance on long straight stairs. A field experiment was conducted in a subway station in China involving 30 healthy volunteers with mean (SD) age of 38.6 (16.1). Each participant was required to ascend 71.4 m height straight stairs consisted of 6 stair sections, then required to descend the same stairs after an enough rest period. During the rest period, the participant was asked to answer a questionnaire related to individual subjective estimation of upward movement. Movement parameters including overall speed, local speed and individual cadences as well as physiological indicators like blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) were recorded and discussed. The mean individual upward overall speed is 0.81 m/s, while the mean individual downward overall speed is 1.03 m/s. The local speed exhibited a progressive reduced tendency within each stair section reflecting the development of leg muscle fatigue, and then presented a higher value when the subjects passed through the transition passageway and entered a new stair section meaning a small recovery during walking on horizontal passageway. With respective to the BP results, only systolic blood pressure appeared a significant increment after the experiment in the case of upward movement, except for the young female group, indicating that stair-ascending evacuation was vigorous exercise. The results of HR experienced a sharp increase within the first 10 s followed gradual increase, and then maintained constant. The questionnaire results showed that, there was a high percentage of participants (about 50%) used the handrail but with a relatively low individual usage frequency (13.4%) during stair-ascending. Some participants (about 10%) started to feel very tired when finished the movement of three stair sections (about 33.9 m height), and almost 40% participants felt very tired when finished the whole upward evacuation (71.4 m height).