Construction and empirical study of a safety risk assessment index system for sports venues based on regional...

Sports venues are critical public spaces for competition, fitness, recreation, and emergency response, and their safety directly affects public well-being and the orderly operation of the sports sector. Grounded in regional disaster system theory, this study developed a safety risk assessment index system for sports venues using the Delphi method and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The system comprises three primary indicators, seven secondary indicators, and 27 tertiary indicators, structured around disaster-causing factors, disaster-prone environment, and disaster-bearing bodies. Based on data from 15 sampled stadium-type and gymnasium-type venues across five major regions of China, a cross-sectional baseline assessment was conducted using a multi-level fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model. To move beyond composite grading alone, obstacle degree analysis was further applied to identify the dominant factors constraining venue safety improvement. The results showed that, among the three primary dimensions, disaster-causing factors obtained the highest evaluation score, followed by disaster-prone environment, while disaster-bearing bodies scored lowest. Exploratory stratified analysis further showed that stadium-type and gymnasium-type venues had similar overall safety scores but different internal risk structures and obstacle-factor profiles. Obstacle-factor diagnosis indicated that the major safety constraints were concentrated in crowd- and personnel-response weaknesses, human-induced operational risks, low-frequency high-impact and coupling risks, and internal governance deficiencies. These findings provide exploratory sample-level evidence suggesting that venue safety governance should combine common baseline interventions with venue-type-specific priorities, including crowd-density control, operational standardization, preparedness for compound and high-consequence risks, and improved institutional coordination and emergency planning. Practical application of the obstacle rankings should be locally validated rather than directly used as a daily safety checklist for individual venues.