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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Disaster and Emergency Medicine
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1555735
Research on Risk Factors of Human Stampede in Mass Gathering Activities Considering Organizational Patterns
Provisionally accepted- 1 College of Resources and Environment Engineering, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China
- 2 Safety and Emergency Research Institute, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
- 3 School of Management, Fudan University, Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China
Mass gathering activities are often accompanied by safety risks especially overcrowding, since the characteristics of risk factors may differ under various organizational patterns. However, this issue has not been sufficiently studied, which could lead to cognitive biases in understanding the risks associated with various mass gathering activities, thereby affecting the effectiveness of preventive measures. This study investigates the risk factors of human stampede in mass gathering activities, with a particular focus on analyzing the influence of different organizational patterns on these risks and their implications for safety management. By combining Grounded Theory and Iterative Self-Organizing Clustering Algorithm (ISODATA), 209 overcrowding cases were coded to create a dataset containing risk factors. The organization coefficient was proposed to characterize the degree of risk in different clusters, and the clustering results revealed three types of organizational patterns including organized(O_31=1.9174), applied(O_82=2.9831), and spontaneous(O_73=4.4327). The results indicate significant differences between the three organizational patterns in terms of aggregation causes, layout characteristics, and risk levels, which directly impacts the safety of mass gathering activities. Furthermore, similarities are observed in terms of triggering behaviors, knowledge, awareness, and management across the four categories. This study provides theoretical evidence for risk prevention and safety management of human stampede in mass gathering.
Keywords: Mass gathering1, Organizational pattern2, Spontaneous gathering3, Risk Factors4, Unsupervised Clustering Algorithms5
Received: 05 Jan 2025; Accepted: 24 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lu, Wang, Dai, Zou, Lu and Hong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Ying Lu, College of Resources and Environment Engineering, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430081, Hubei Province, China
Weihui Dai, School of Management, Fudan University, Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China
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