A study on design criteria for slope walking facilities to reduce the aged's falling
2018 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Ageing makes faster progress in Korean than any other countries, which has resulted in social problems including decrease in economic population and such phenomenon is not what happened in Korea alone. Japan where the ageing reaches a certain level has suffered social conflict and problem such as a generational conflict and the measure to deal with such problems has been sought.
Such a social problem in ageing society is not limited to humanities and social sector. Generally the facilities and the standard in our society have been designed and built for the ordinary person (young adults) and thus the aged complains of the inconvenience when using the facilities which however are convenient and safe for the ordinary person. According to KICT (2017), most of the aged feels the physical inconvenience when using the stair, pedestrian overpass and ramp, pointing out particularly too many steps and a high kick plate (step height)
According to the study on walking pattern of the aged on flat surface by Roh (2015), those who have a good physical condition or walking ability among the aged who can walk alone (without walking assistance device) accounts for 82% when comparing to the ordinary person. Among the aged who do not use the stick or walking assistance device, those who feel the inconvenience with walking is only 54% of the walking ability of the ordinary person. Falling accident is attributable to such poor walking ability (particularly dynamic balance ability and physical strength.
The aged would surely feel more physical inconvenience when walking the stair or ramp than walking the flat surface and this study thus is intended to measure the walking pattern and physical conditions while the aged is walking the ramp and then develop the design factors and criteria for walking facilities based on data from the measurement, which would help prevent the falling or slipping by the aged while walking, thereby making commitment to reducing the resultant social and economic cost.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Linköping: Statens väg- och transportforskningsinstitut, 2018.
Research subject
X RSXC
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:vti:diva-12972OAI: oai:DiVA.org:vti-12972DiVA, id: diva2:1204958
Conference
18th International Conference Road Safety on Five Continents (RS5C 2018), Jeju Island, South Korea, May 16-18, 2018
2018-05-162018-05-092018-05-25Bibliographically approved