Escaping Death – Geometrical Recommendations for High Value Targets

Abstract

Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) and Suicide Bombing have become the headline news for every other day. It is a growing global phenomenon that is happening from Iraq to Afghanistan, Syria to United Kingdom and Spain to Pakistan. An average US soldier in Iraq receives 6 to 23 blast wave shocks over his/her tenure in Iraq. Pakistan has witnessed 120 suicide bombing attacks in last six years. While various attempts have been made to assess the impact of blast overpressure on buildings and animals, little has been done on crowd formation, crowd density and underlying geometry to mitigate the effects. This paper is set to make geometrical recommendations to reduce the casualties in case of such an incident for high value targets, like mosques and army facilities in the frontline countries fighting the global war on terrorism. A virtual simulation tool has been developed which is capable of assessing the impact of crowd formation patterns and their densities on the magnitude of injury and number of casualties during a suicide bombing attack. Results indicated that the worst crowd formation is street (Zig-Zag) where 30% crowd can be dead and 45% can be injured, given typical explosive carrying capacity of a single suicide bomber. Row wise crowd formations was found to be the best for reducing the effectiveness of an attack with 18% crowd in lethal zone and 38% in injury zones. For a typical suicide bombing attack, we can reduce the number of fatalities by 12%, and the number of injuries by 7%. Simulation results were compared and validated by the real-life incidents and found to be in good agreement. Line-of-sight with the attacker, rushing towards the exit, and stampede were found to be the most lethal choices both during and after the attack. These findings, although preliminary, may have implications for emergency response and counter terrorism.