Field study to characterize customer flow and ventilation rates in retail buildings in Shenzhen, China

Reduction of the customers’ exposure risk of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in the retail buildings, i.e., supermarkets and small shops where residents purchase daily necessities is of prime importance during pandemic. In this study, the main influencing factors of the exposure risk of SARS-CoV-2, namely the occupant density, dwell time, and fresh air volume per person, were on-sited measured in 5 supermarkets and 21 small shops in Shenzhen, China. The small shops with an occupant area per person of 4.7 m(2)/per presented a more crowded environment than the supermarkets with an occupant area per person of 18.8 m(2)/per. The average dwell time of customers in the supermarkets linearly increased with the floor area and its probability distribution was fitted well by the Gamma distribution with a shape parameter of 3.0. The average dwell time of customers in the supermarkets was relatively longer than the combination of five types of small shops. In addition, the measured average outdoor air change rate of the small shops by natural ventilation was 10.7 h(−1), while that of the supermarkets by mechanical ventilation was only 0.7 h(−1). Correspondingly, the CO(2) concentration in the small shops was 100–150 ppm lower than the supermarkets. The small shops provided an average fresh air volume per person of 216 m(3)/(h·per), far exceeding the supermarkets with a value of 95 m(3)/(h·per).