Compliance of Children's Play Equipment in Urban Parks of Gonabad with National Safety Standards (Case Study)

Background and aims: Parks are a place for children's play and activity . Safety of these social environments is important in environmental planning. It is necessary to provide quality and sustainable conditions for park playgrounds and equipments to improve the safety and health of children. In general, the play equipments standards are formulated and published by the Institute of Standards & Industrial Research of Iran and the manufacturers are notified and required to design children's play equipment according to the most up-to-date standards. Since the municipality is responsible for purchasing, installing and managing the parks, it is required to purchase equipments with a standard certificate. Given the children's accidents in public parks duewhile usig such equipments, issues related to the safety of play equipment in the parks should be addressed as fast as possible. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the compliance of child play equipments in public parks in Gonabad with safety standards and national standards. Methods: The present study is an applied research conducted by combining descriptive and surveying methods and utilizing experts’ ideas and flip-flop field and non-conformities their results the the standard 6436-2. In distance contrasts with the standard The minimum horizontal distance adjacent was not The the the was less than the The distance the swing the accordance with the The results of the slide showed that there were 25 cases of non-compliance with standard requirements of 6436-3. In 65% of the slides, the in 75% of In 80% of the slides, the height of the sliding guard In 60% of the In 75% of them, the transition from the head section to the exit section is a sudden gradient change. of the slides, the minimum length of the exit in accordance with ground had no suitable impact-absorption surface and back protection. Very low attenuation causes suspicion. rounded. Conclusion: The present study showed that in all surveyed parks, there were various inconsistencies in children's play equipments including slide, swing, flip-flop that did not comply with national standards. Accordingly, it is necessary for city managers to consider national standards in the design of this equipment. In Iran, urban design, has no long history, while designing children's playgrounds, especially for the age group of 5 to 12 years, has had less priority. Much research has been done in European and American societies to improve urban spaces and design a new generation of playgrounds for children. But in Eastern societies, especially in Iran, there is no comprehensive study focusing on children's play spaces, especially for children aged 5 to 12 years. The results of evaluating the swings and slides of urban parks using national standards also indicate that there were various mismatches with relevant national standards in all parks. In all swings of all parks, the distance between the hanging points contrasts with the standard requirements of 6436-2. In some parks, the minimum horizontal distance between the two adjacent swing seats is not met, the swing distance from the ground floor is less than the standard, and the horizontal distance between the swing seat and the adjacent structure is not up to the standard. Also, the results of the slides’ evaluation showed that the horizontal bar was not provided for the open section, the height of the horizontal bar was not between 600 mm and 900 mm above the starting section, the lateral guard height of the sliding start section is not equal to 500 mm, their start section has no minimum length of 350 mm, the transition of the sliding section to the exit section is performed by abrupt change of slope and the minimum exit section length is not as standard. Accordingly, it is recommended to provide the necessary anthropometric data to design and manufacture ergonomically designed equipment for park safety while introducing integrated management of safety, health and environment, to introduce the game park equipment manufacturers in the country. It is also suggested that the relevant organizations and institutions strive to develop anthropometric and dimensional standards and provide the primary data that play an important role in the safe design of the playground equipment by properly interacting with research centers and the of Industrial of Iran. Finally, the results of the present study emphasize the safety audit and enhancement of the safety level of children's play equipment and state the improvement of the safety level of children's play equipment as a necessity. The design of the slides as well as the modification of the playgrounds of children's playgrounds according to relevant standards should be prioritized.