13/03/2024
Can riot-control water cannon be lethal?
The water cannon is often used by law enforcement agencies as a means to control riots. There are no obvious standards for police forces on how to use it, aim it, and most of all keep a safe distance from the protesters in order to avoid irreversible bodily harm.
In a paper to appear in International Journal of Engineering Science, co-authored with Prof. Jing Xie , Dr. María González García and co-authors, we examine numerically this issue for various impact scenarios.
The abstract is appended below. Stay tuned :-)
A riot-control water cannon is a large, supposedly nonlethal apparatus that uses pressurized water to control and disperse crowds. However, riot-control water cannons may cause personal injury if directly aimed at the human forehead, for example. Therefore, we systematically analyzed, via a numerical model, the spatio-temporal evolution of the equivalent pressure of a water cannon and its influence on the human body dynamic response, especially considering the head and neck body regions. The simulation results suggest that within10 m is a critically dangerous working distance because the impact of a water cannon will lead to the skull, cervical vertebra and brain injuries. In addition, compared to side/back impacts, frontal impacts are much more
dangerous due to a more extensive range of head movement. Oblique impact induces rotational movement on the human body, resulting in a significant risk of injury. A quantitative injury risk analysis is presented to provide safety guidance for water cannon usage.
