Risk Management: The Relationship Between Perceived Risk Factors of Crowd Disaster and Perceived Safety in Large Buildings

Abstract

Poor risk management within large buildings such as sport stadiums, concert halls, and religious buildings have resulted in crowd disasters in various venues across the world. Within the built environment, safety is considered in two main parts: objective safety (normative and substantive) and subjective safety (perceived). Facilities management within large buildings used by large crowds must involve effective risk management as a key component. Fruin suggested that Force, Information, Space and Time (FIST) are the main factors that influence the occurrence of crowd disaster. It has also been theorised that poor perceived safety alone could result into crowd disaster. By using the FIST model, this paper investigates the relationship between the four critical FIST factors and perceived safety in large buildings. The research chose to use the Holy Mosque in Makkah as a case study. The Holy Mosque is a large building of 356,800 m² with a maximum capacity of two million users (pilgrims). Data was collected using iPad devices via a self-administered questionnaire distributed to 1940 pilgrims of 62 different nationalities. The results were analysed using SPSS for descriptive analysis and AMOS 22 for Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The findings clearly confirmed that there is a significant relationship between the FIST factors and perceived safety in large buildings. These findings will inform design consultants and facilities managers as they design and/or manage such facilities.