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Guiding the building occupants under fire emergency to a safe place is an open research problem, and finding solutions to address the problem requires a perfect knowledge of the fire building evacuation domain. The use of ontologies to model knowledge of a domain allows a common and shared understanding of that domain, between people and heterogeneous systems. This paper presents an ontology that aims to build a knowledge model to understand the referred domain better and help develop more capable building evacuation solutions and systems. The herein proposed ontology considers the different variables and actors involved in the fire building evacuation process. We followed the Methontology methodology for its developing, and we present all the development steps, from the specification to its implementation with the Protégé tool. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Dynamic escape route guidance in intelligent buildings offers a great opportunity to evacuate buildings more efficiently and safely in comparison to static escape route guidance. A disadvantage of static escape route guidance is that the system is not able to react to temporary events in the building. In a worst-case scenario, the escape route leads directly into the fire or hazard zone. To investigate this risk, two algorithms for building evacuation have been developed. The first algorithm (static), demonstrates the static evacuation from the building. This is designed to demonstrate the behavior based on rescue and escape route planning, which is currently common used in existing and new buildings. The second algorithm (dynamic) shows how evacuation could take place in an intelligent building using an autonomous system. This implies that the evacuation system is able to react dynamically to the hazards (e.g. fire, toxic gases, or blocked corridors) and replan the escape routes in realtime and visualize them to the occupants inside the building. Both algorithms were investigated on the parameters: Escape route blocked, evacuation time, and length of escape path. The comparison of the algorithms was investigated for randomly generated scenarios and scenarios based on domain knowledge. This study has shown that dynamic escape route guidance has a high potential for improving building evacuation in an emergency situation.

The risks that emerge during an emergency and disasters as well as the damages caused by such risks adversely affect human lives, the buildings they live in and the interiors of such buildings. Emergency and disaster management system is a holistic process. Within this process, the Interior Architects' command in the flow of management system is significant in terms of being acquainted with when to step in and at what point of the system flow to play a part. The risks that are revealed as a result of management activities and the requirements produced afterwards designate the necessity for taking and implementing measures beforehand. At this point, how important the indoor arrangements and planning are in terms of loss of lives and safety during and after an incident rises distinctively to the surface, apart from the structural arrangements intended for prevention and mitigation. The system built should demonstrate not attenuating but strengthening and supporting approaches in terms of a secure design. A safe architecture that has been established in line with legal requirements and regulations is an integral part of a system that cannot be abstracted from interior space. In the study, Interior Space Design Approaches as Part of 'Passive Safety Measures' which are a part of the emergency management system have been characterised. The system setup discussed pursuant to fire threat has identified the fundamental approach criteria in terms of a secure indoor evacuation. The purposed design system relation has been assessed on the historical Famagusta–Bandabuliya Building that has been refunctioned.

An effective evacuation of buildings is critical to minimize casualties due to natural or anthropogenic hazards. Building evacuation models help in preparing for future events and shed light on possible shortcomings of current evacuation designs. However, such models are seldom compared or validated with real evacuations, which is a critical step in assessing their predictive capacities. This research focuses on the evacuation of a K-12 (kindergarten to 12th grade) school located within the tsunami inundation zone of Iquique, Chile. An agent-based evacuation model was developed to simulate the evacuation of approximately 1500 children and staff from the school during a global evacuation drill carried out for the entire city. The model simulates the motions of heterogeneous human agents, and the simulations were validated using video analysis of the real event. Resulting error estimations between predicted versus measured flow rates and evacuation times are 13.5% and 5.9%, respectively. The good agreement between the simulated and measured values can be attributed to the known distribution of students and staff at the start of the drill, and their known exposure to emergency preparedness protocols. However, the results presented herein show that this mathematical evacuation model can be used for logistical changes in the emergency planning.

In this Demo-Paper, we present EvaWeb, a Web Application for simulating the evacuation of buildings with a grid automaton. It is designed to support learning in the domain of mathematical modelling based on real-world problems. EvaWeb allows for 1) creating scenarios consisting of floor plans and persons within the environment, 2) loading and storing these scenarios to a text string, 3) automatically executing these scenarios, and 4) configuring the aesthetics and algorithms used during the execution. EvaWeb can be used online for free at https://evadid.it/eva2.

A three-dimensional geographic information system (3DGIS)-based multi-agent geo-simulation model was developed using the GAMA simulation platform integrating 3D GIS layers and agent-based modelling...

Since the tragic loss of life in the World Trade Center disaster, efforts have refocused on the provision of safe and efficient evacuation procedures, especially for occupants who cannot negotiate exit stairs without assistance. Several evacuation options have been designed specifically for people with mobility impairments, including occupant evacuation elevators (OEEs). Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 51 participants with mobility impairments working in buildings located in five major metropolitan areas within the U.S. The dual goals in this study were to gain an understanding of how building occupants with mobility impairments evacuate multi-story buildings during fire emergencies and to identify perspectives on the use of elevators during fire evacuations. Data analysis of interviews highlighted the benefits and concerns of study participants involving both typical building evacuation methods (i.e., emergency stair travel devices and areas of refuge), as well as evacuation methods using elevators. This study also highlights improvements that can be made to elevator systems, particularly OEEs, to reduce anxiety about fire evacuation and increase trust in the occupant evacuation elevator system via a variety of means, including education and consultation in preparation for the evacuation, information and attention to occupant needs while the evacuation is taking place, and two-way feedback and discussions afterwards. Key to all of these improvements is the need to include those with mobility impairments in the planning and execution of fire evacuations and to facilitate their ability for self-evacuation as much as is practicable. The results of this study led to guidance on evacuation planning and procedures, the use of existing elevators for evacuation of people with mobility impairments, and the use of occupant evacuation elevators.

It is well known that a large percentage of occupants in a building are evacuated together with their friends, families, and officemates, especially in China. Small group behaviors are therefore critical for crowd movement. This paper aims to study the crowd dynamic considering different social relations and the impacts of small groups on crowd dynamics in emergency evacuation. Three experiments are conducted in an 11-storey office building. In the first two experiments, all participants are classmates and know each other well. They are evacuated as individuals or pairs. In the third experiment, social relations among the participants are complex. Participants consist of 8 families, 6 lovers and several individuals. Space–time features, speed characteristics and density–speed relations for each experiment are analyzed and compared. Results conclude that small group behaviors can make positive impacts on crowd dynamics when evacuees know each other and are cooperative. This conclusion is also testified by four verified experiments. In the third experiment, speeds of evacuees are lowest. Small groups form automatically with the presence of intimate social relations. Small groups in this experiment slow down the average speed of the crowd and make disturbance on the crowd flow. Small groups in this case make negative impacts on the movement of the crowd. It is because that evacuees do not know each other and they are competitive to each other. Characteristics of different types of small groups are also investigated. Experimental data can provide foundational parameters for evacuation model development and are helpful for building designers.

In the past few decades, numerous ultra high-rise buildings have been erected in the metropolitan areas of many cities around the world. For the related building designers, building occupants and the governments, fire safety problem is certainly a major concern, especially after the collapse of World Trade Center in the 9/11 event. That disaster makes people reconsider ultra high-rise building evacuation strategies. Of the current strategies, using elevators in ultra high-rise buildings to assist evacuation seems to be promising in improving evacuation efficiency. To quantitatively evaluate elevator assisted evacuation process, an event-driven agent-based modeling approach is proposed in the present paper. This modeling approach could capture not only the movement characteristics of stair-using occupants but also the detailed elevator motion features. The combined effects of occupants’ and elevators’ parameters on the evacuation efficiency have been investigated. Results indicated that the model is helpful to reveal the dynamics of elevator assisted evacuation, and sometime, using elevators to move all occupants to ground safety point may not be an optimal solution.

Stair evacuation plays a crucial role in building evacuation since stairs are generally the only means to evacuate high-rises on fire. To ensure safety stair design, the Life Safety Code suggests using a performance-based design approach, which requires evacuation simulations. Most of existing simulations, however, do not consider the structure of stairs and fatigue of evacuees, and these simulations are not validated by real emergency events or experiments. This paper is on improving the simulation of pedestrian flow in the stairs of high-rises by addressing these issues. A new Cellular Automata simulation model is developed where the simulation map is divided into zones based on the stair structure, and the rule of evacuees’ movement for each zone is appropriately defined to simulate turning behavior. To validate the simulation, a fire drill was held in two high-rise buildings. In this drill, evacuees felt tired after a walk. The simulation results demonstrate that, compared with the simulation without fatigue factor, our simulation can predict the evacuation time more accurately. Building designers can make evacuation plans and strategies based on the new simulation.

A MANET (Mobile Ad Hoc NETwork) is a network that consists of mobile terminals such as smart phones. In MANETs, information messages can be exchanged directly among mobile terminals using wireless networks so that no centralized server or network infrastructure is required. Therefore, MANETs are very well suited as network technology in emergency situations. For providing the users with adequate evacuation routes, the location and behavior of users must be taken into account. This paper presents the simulation evaluation of a MANET-based building evacuation system which considers changes of the evacuation situation over time. In addition, we discuss the influence of different user behavior based on simulation experiments.

A MANET (Mobile Ad Hoc NETwork) is a network that consists of mobile terminals such as smart phones. In MANETs, information messages can be exchanged directly among mobile terminals using wireless networks so that no centralized server or network infrastructure is required. Therefore, MANETs are very well suited as network technology in emergency situations. For providing the users with adequate evacuation routes, the location and behavior of users must be taken into account. We have already proposed a MANET-based indoor evacuation system for deriving evacuation routes. This paper presents an evaluation framework combining a simulator and mobile devices for supporting the development of the evacuation system. The evacuation guidance system running on a mobile device exchanges messages with the users in the simulator so that the behavior of our software could be evaluated. Various experiments show the suitability of our approach.

A MANET (Mobile Ad Hoc NETwork) is a network that consists of mobile terminals such as smart phones. In MANETs, information messages can be exchanged directly among mobile terminals using wireless networks so that no centralized server or network infrastructure is required. Therefore, MANETs are very well suited as network technology in emergency situations. For providing the users with adequate evacuation routes, the location and behavior of users must be taken into account. This paper presents a MANET-based building evacuation system to derive evacuation routes. In particular, we discuss the influence of different user behavior based on simulation experiments.

We discuss an approach for spatial discrete-event Modeling and Simulation (M&S) of crowds using the Cell-DEVS formalism, which provides some advantages over existing crowd modeling approaches, as it provides a trade-off between the simulated granularity level and the computational requirements. We explain through simple one- and two-dimensional models how Cell-DEVS is used to build pedestrian models. Furthermore, the usability of the approach is verified by employing it in real-life case studies. We discuss different case studies, employing the Cell-DEVS approach to build a model for a general building evacuation, and a fire evacuation model.

Fire emergencies impose significant threats to building occupants. During evacuation, fire has significant impacts on evacuees' behaviors, by e.g., changing their route availability, disturbing their perception of the environment due to reduced visibility, impairing their mobility that is usually associated with severe injuries, and causing significant mental stress that may lead to complicated and unpredictable navigation decisions. Despite the detrimental effects of fire on crowd evacuation, most existing building evacuation simulation models and tools do not account for the impacts of fire on the evacuation process; at most they rely on oversimplified assumptions and simulation settings. In this study, a new fire evacuation simulation model, named FREEgress (Fire Risk Emulated Environment for Egress), is developed to simulate the dynamic influences of heat, temperature, toxic gas and smoke particles on evacuees' mobility, navigation decision making and health conditions. FREEgress (1) introduces evacuee agents who are aware of and able to assess the fire hazards, and can make fire risk-informed navigation decisions; and (2) models the interactions between evacuee agents and the dynamic fire emergency environments and the consequent evacuation process. The verification of FREEgress is conducted by comparing its simulation results with two existing simulation tools, SAFEgress and FDS + Evac. In addition, a case study using FREEgress is carried out to simulate the evacuation in a museum for 30 different fire emergency scenarios. The simulation results are analyzed to assess the impacts of three important factors, namely initial fire location, evacuation delay time and evacuee behavior, on the evacuation process and evacuation outcomes. The case study demonstrated the potential value of FREEgress to support both the safety design of new buildings and maintenance and emergency management of constructed facilities.

Architectural Heritage is often prone to fire risk especially when many significant wooden structures with a particular historic and artistic value are present. This is the case of the Italian style historical theatres. Increasing fire safety of this architectural heritage generally clashes with preserving the original building features: massive and irreversible interventions are often needed so as to respect current severe regulations. Moreover, upgrading interventions can be insufficient so as to effectively improve occupants’ safety level, especially in overcrowded spaces and when people do not know much of the building itself. Occupants’ safety depends on their behaviours and their possibility to rapidly evacuate to a safe place. One of the most effective ways to help them to achieve this aim seems to be the adoption of a good emergency evacuation wayfinding system, especially in smoke or black-out conditions. This paper analyses the effectiveness of a reversible, easy-to-remove and low-impact system for evacuation guidance based on photoluminescent materials (PLM). The proposed continuous wayfinding system (CWS) is composed by PLM tiles along evacuation paths (both corridors and stairs). The application to a case study, the Italian style historical theatre “Gentile da Fabriano”, is then provided. Tests involve more than 100 individuals in smoke and black out conditions. CWS effectiveness was compared to a traditional punctual system in terms of motion speeds (for single pedestrians) and total evacuation time (for the whole building evacuation drill). Questionnaires filled in by involved pedestrians qualitatively evaluated the individuals’ acceptance of CWS. Tests with CWS show that individual's motion speed rises up to 50% and the total evacuation time is reduced down to 25% in respect to the traditional system. Comparisons with previous studies on PLM signs are provided. CWS can be easily introduced in this kind of historical theatres so as to increase the occupants’ safety level.

Social relation network and group behavior are critical in building evacuation. In this paper, six building evacuation experiments are designed and carried out to study the social relation and group behavior in evacuation, and to explore how social relation influence participants’ behavior when they can use elevators as egress. Evacuees are all from one undergraduate class with 30 students. The pre-existing social relations such as friends, girl and boy friends, classmates, and roommates are known. Experiments 1-3 are conducted to study the participants’ Social Relation Network (SRN) based on analyzing social network questionnaires. Results indicate that the crowd in evacuation form different small groups based on the pre-existing SRN, and the average influence degree of social relation affected on the leader-and-follower behavior in evacuation experiment is 78.3%. In addition, there are three kinds of evacuees in evacuation experiment, including leaders, followers and lonely evacuees. Experiments 4-6 are carried out to study how social relation, elevator egress and evacuation experience influence their behavior in evacuation. Participants are divided into pairs based on their SRN and the Mutual Believed Degree (MBD) method. It is found that social relation can enhance participants’ speeds (participants are young students), and influence their decision making on selecting stairs or elevators for evacuation. Their speeds follow the Normal Distribution N(1.16, 0.18). Several interesting phenomena are observed in the experiments, such as redirection and overtaking. In addition, if the elevators cannot be properly used, evacuation will be delayed.

Presently, most models of crowd evacuations within a building are created manually. This is inefficient. To address this issue, this paper focuses on the differences and relationship between industry foundation classes (IFC) and the macroscopic network model for evacuation (MNME), and studies the mapping and construction methods used to convert entity objects into nodes and arcs in the MNME. Furthermore, corresponding attribute information in the MNME are established from IFC. Based on this process, the MNME is created and used as an input to EVACNET4 to obtain simulation results. Finally, the results, together with a 3D building model, are expressed in a unified environment. Our study results show that a network as well as the relevant attributes can be automatically generated from IFC, and can be adapted to different working conditions. The method proposed in this paper can automatically map the semantic information model to the MNME and the simulation result as well as the building model can be integrated in a Geographic Information System (GIS) environment.

After hearing a fire alarm, people continue to carry out activities not directly connected to the evacuation procedure: this pre-movement phase could be very long, especially when people are involved in carrying out their working activities and in using their electronic devices. Starting from this problem regarding safety, our study proposes a system for reducing pre-movement time that is based on an interaction with the people being evacuated. The system, composed of individual wearable devices, is organized in two modules: the first is the Zig-Bee-based localization module which identifies people's positions after the alarm and understands whether they are evacuating; the second is an interactive module which gives a personal stimulus to latecomers. This system was tested for university building evacuation. A case study has been analyzed, which also compared experimental results to those of simulation software. The simulator was able to reasonably reproduce the real phenomenon. The effectiveness of the system was investigated through simulations by considering different individual responses. Our results demonstrate that up to 30% reduction in total evacuation time can be obtained.

Signage system is important to lead occupants to circulate as well as to evacuate people in emergency. Multiple exit signs leading to different directions at an intersection for general circulation may create confusion in people under emergency, and therefore can jeopardize the situation into a chaotic state, especially in buildings with a complex layout. Many past studies focused on implementing different techniques or designs to improve the existing signage system for better visual and navigating effects, such as the use of laser beams, the combination of audio and video cues, and the selection of color, location, and mounting height. How to better control the signage system under emergency has been overlooked. This paper proposed a BIM-controlled signage system to solve the problem. With the help of heat sensors that detect the fire prone areas in the building, the proposed system identifies the best route and activates the corresponding sign blinkers with high intensity. During this action, exit signs that do not lead to the best route become inactive. This system provides a natural interface for remote operation in facility management to efficiently guide people to the right exit under emergency. A prototype of the signage system is presented and future research directions are discussed.

Cel: Celem niniejszego artykułu jest przedstawienie zależności pomiędzy procedurami zawartymi w instrukcji bezpieczeństwa pożarowego, scenariuszami pożarowymi oraz próbnymi ewakuacjami jako kluczowymi elementami systemu zarządzania bezpieczeństwem pożarowym w obiektach. Wprowadzenie: Artykuł poświęcony jest elementom systemu zarządzania bezpieczeństwem pożarowym jakimi są instrukcja bezpieczeństwa pożarowego, scenariusz pożarowy oraz próbna ewakuacja połączona z ćwiczeniami obiektowymi straży pożarnej. Określono wymagania prawne odnośnie zawartości instrukcji bezpieczeństwa pożarowego oraz scenariuszy pożarowych, a także częstotliwości przeprowadzania próbnej ewakuacji. Jednocześnie przedstawiono rodzaje scenariuszy pożarowych oraz elementy, jakie powinny zostać określone przy tworzeniu scenariusza ewakuacyjnego. W celu zapewnienia właściwego poziomu bezpieczeństwa należy opracować system zarządzania bezpieczeństwem pożarowym oparty na spójnym i rzeczowym określeniu warunków pożarowych obiektu w instrukcji bezpieczeństwa pożarowego, której częścią integralną musi być scenariusz pożarowy i ewakuacyjny. Przedstawione w artykule obserwacje z przeprowadzonych na terenie województwa łódzkiego próbnych ewakuacji w siedmiu budynkach biurowych dowodzą, że wpływ na późniejsze zachowanie się ludzi w trakcie ewakuacji ma system wdrożonych i utrwalonych w procesie cyklicznego szkolenia procedur zawartych w instrukcji bezpieczeństwa pożarowego. Wnioski: Rzetelnie opracowana instrukcja bezpieczeństwa pożarowego musi zawierać właściwie przygotowane scenariusze pożarowe oraz scenariusz i wytyczne z zakresu ewakuacji. Podkreślić należy, że na poprawność funkcjonowania systemu zarządzania bezpieczeństwem w obiekcie wpływa czynnik ludzki. W celu eliminacji ludzkich błędów konieczne jest cykliczne szkolenie użytkowników obiektów z wprowadzonych procedur oraz przeprowadzanie próbnych ewakuacji z budynku. Z przeprowadzonych obserwacji i wywiadu z uczestnikami próbnych ewakuacji wynika, że osoby przywiązują większą wagę do analizowania warunków ewakuacji w obiektach, które cyklicznie poddawane są szkoleniom z wprowadzonych procedur, które stanowić muszą jedną, spójną całość, poddawaną weryfikacji i wprowadzaniu ulepszeń. Znaczenie dla praktyki: Przedstawiony w artykule opis koła Deminga tak zwanego Systemu PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) służyć może jako system kontroli i aktualizacji wdrożonego systemu ochrony przeciwpożarowej w obiekcie, pomoże w eliminacji błędów oraz poprawie bezpieczeństwa pożarowego budynku., Aim: The purpose of this article is to expose the link between procedures contained in fire safety instruction, fire incidents and evacuation drills, as key elements of the fire safety management system within buildings. Introduction: This article is dedicated to elements of the fire safety management system encompassing fire safety instruction, fire incident scenarios and building evacuation drills combined with practical training for firefighters. The article identified legal requirements for the content of fire safety instruction, fire incident scenarios and frequency of evacuation drills. Simultaneously, the paper illustrates a variety of developed fire incident scenarios and elements, which should be considered in the construction of new evacuation instructions. In order to secure an appropriate level of safety, it is necessary to develop a fire safety management system based on credible and consistent articulation of fire conditions for a given building in associated fire safety instructions. The key part of which should contain a fire incident and evacuation scenario. Additionally, the article contains information gained during observation of seven evacuation drills performed in office buildings located in the Łódź region. Observations reveal that when safety procedures are incorporated in fire safety instructions and are subsequently practiced during cyclical training of building occupants, they have an influence on the ultimate behaviour of people who follow well established procedures during an eventual evacuation of a building. Conclusions: A well-produced fire safety instruction should include well-analyzed fire incident scenarios as well as evacuation procedures. It is emphasised that the human factor impacts significantly on the efficient operation of safety management systems in buildings. In order to eliminate the potential for human error, it is necessary to regularly train building occupants and perform evacuation drills. Based on research and interviews, with occupants who participate in evacuation drills, it was noted that people attach a greater amount of importance to the analysis of building evacuation arrangements, when these are practiced on a cyclical basis. The implementation of training procedures should form a single coherent entity incorporating verification and introduction of improvements. Practical significance: The Deming Wheel – PDCA system (Plan-Do-Check-Act), which was introduced in the article, may be utilised as a control mechanism for the implementation of a fire safety system in a given building and also help with the elimination of emerging problems as well as improvement of fire safety in a building.

Geospatial research on emergency response in multi-level micro-spatial environments (e.g., multi-story buildings) that aims at understanding and analyzing human movements at the micro level has increased considerably since 9/11. Past research has shown that reducing the time rescuers needed to reach a disaster site within a building (e.g., a particular room) can have a significant impact on evacuation and rescue outcomes in this kind of disaster situations. With the purpose developing emergency response systems that are capable of using complex real-time geospatial information to generate fast-changing scenarios, this study develops a Spatiotemporal Optimal Route Algorithm (SORA) for guiding rescuers to move quickly from various entrances of a building to the disaster site (room) within the building. It identifies the optimal route and building evacuation bottlenecks within the network in real-time emergency situations. It is integrated with a Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) based tracking system in order to monitor dynamic geospatial entities, including the dynamic capacities and flow rates of hallways per time period. Because of the limited scope of this study, the simulated data were used to implement the SORA and evaluate its effectiveness for performing 3D topological analysis. The study shows that capabilities to take into account detailed dynamic geospatial data about emergency situations, including changes in evacuation status over time, are essential for emergency response systems.

As the disabled and the elderly are relatively lacking in the ability to cope with crisis compared to the general public, they can become major victims of casualties in the event of the outbreak of a fire in a building. The investigation of the fire trends in facilities for the old and the youth mainly used by people vulnerable to disasters revealed that the degree of casualties per fire case in such facilities was higher than the overall degree of casualties from fire. As most of the provisions in the current building evacuation regulations and crisis response systems in South Korea are devised for the health and safety of the general public, there is a lack of crisis response safety systems for people vulnerable to disasters. In this regard, this paper proposed system improvement measures to enhance the evacuation safety of the disabled and the elderly in the event of a fire in a building, through case studies of fires that occurred in disabled and elderly welfare facilities and analysis of the relevant regulations and standards.

As building structure is more and more complex, confronting evacuation prone to retrograde and blockage phenomenon, traditional plain of evacuation schematic has been difficult to meet the demand guidance for fire evacuation. In this paper, we propose a building information model (BIM) for the guidance of the three-dimensional building within the evacuation path. Full integration of BIM Technology and virtual reality technology, timely updates to the daily information, form a management platform, through this platform, so that the fire evacuation path is more intuitive, evacuation drills more convenient and management personnel to direct the rescue more accurately. Article schematic through normal fire evacuation, evacuation typical fire scenarios indicate two aspects to exhibit a three-dimensional analysis of the command to evacuate the building evacuation path.

This paper analyses data on occupants׳ movement on stair landings collected during an evacuation drill performed in a six-storey office building in the United States. A total of 215 occupant travel path trajectories were filmed and time on the stair landings and egress behaviours were analysed. Data were analysed using a probabilistic approach, i.e., the probability of different occupant travel paths were calculated in relation to two different factors: (1) crowding on the landings, and (2) the type of interactions between occupants (e.g., merging flows, deference/overtaking behaviours, etc.). Results showed that a higher number of occupants on stair landings caused an increase in the probability for (1) longer travel paths and (2) usage of the outer boundaries on the stair/landing connections. This paper highlights that data and modelling assumptions should be used after a careful evaluation of their field of applicability. In the case of a low occupant load and non-homogenous merging streams (a higher number of people entering the landing from the stairs than the door), floors tend to be emptied from the top to the bottom.

Engineers rely on studies that publish building evacuation data from various occupancies when conducting an egress analysis; this usually includes the people’s pre-movement and movement times. However, much of the available data was collected in Western cultures, such as the U.S., which brings into question their validity to other non-Western cultures, such as Saudi Arabia. This study examines how cultural differences between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia can affect occupants’ self-reported recognition/reaction times, and the cognitive state of occupants during a fire drill. The results of this research indicate that the U.S. populations are more likely to recognize and react to a fire alarm faster than the Saudi populations during a fire drill.

A method and software are proposed for optimal building-evacuation-route planning in terms of identifying evacuation routes and scheduling of evacuees on each route. First, the building-evacuation routes are represented by a P-graph, which gives rise to a time-expanded process-network synthesis ( P N S T ) problem that can be algorithmically solved by the P-graph framework. In the proposed method, each location and passage in the building is given by a set of attributes to be taken into account in the evacuation-route planning. The evacuation time is calculated as a minimum cost of the corresponding P N S T . In addition to the globally optimal solution, the P-graph framework provides the n-best sub-optimal solutions. The validity of the proposed method is illustrated by two examples.

Building evacuation has always been an important research question for government emergent agencies, architecture designer and building energy-saving researchers. However, most research works focus on the emergency decision theory, psychological reactions of individuals and groups, and evacuation simulation operations. Very few research works have been done to investigate the effect of architecture space structure on building evacuation time. This paper discusses the characteristic of linear architecture space structure in buildings, and analyze the influence of linear architecture space organization structure on the evacuation time in campus teaching buildings. The experiment results show that the combination of separated rooms in linear architecture space structure has a better evacuation efficiency than the combination of only large rooms.

Characteristics of different personnel have different reactions when faced fire. As large passenger flow and rich personnel types within commercial building, this paper adopt single factor variable analysis method, through the way of questionnaire analysis of social role, type, whether or not accept the training and other single factor of passengers in the commercial buildings variation on evacuation behavior. The survey results show that: the role of passengers on evacuation behavior is more worker selection confirmation of fire or try to put out the fire, while more customers choose escape. The types of passengers on evacuation behavior is more adult women, the elderly and children choose escape immediately, while adult men try to extinguish the fire; when the exit is crowed, the elderly and children choose waiting for in situ, while adult men and women choose to ease crowd evacuation for a much higher percentage than other types of passengers. Training and exercises on evacuation behavior is received fire drill or training passengers choose the nearest safe exit evacuation and active guidance of crowd evacuation in a significantly higher than the proportion of did not received.

Due to the reason that the number of occupants in high-rise building is usually very large, the evacuation process of the building would cost a lengthy time, which threats the life safety of the occupants under the circumstance of serious disaster such as fire. Thus to ensure the safety of occupants, different evacuation strategies have been proposed. One of the recently proposed strategies is that fire elevators should be used to aid evacuation so that the congestion level in the stairwell would be reduced. To explore the efficiency of elevator aided evacuation process, a network model for building evacuation is established in the present paper. Factors including the building plan component, the number of occupants and the configuration of the elevator status which affect the evacuation efficiency have been numerically investigated. A first principle for elevator aided evacuation has been summarized. Results also indicate that there is a top limit of the optimization process of the elevator aided evacuation.

Existing research and tools used for building evacuation planning do not take into account the common practice of using ladders for rescue operations. The ladders provide a simple and practical way of creating additional exits with a potential to significantly reduce the evacuation time. Use of ladders is critical in case of severe disasters and when some normal exits get blocked. To our knowledge, this paper presents the first systematic planning approach for optimal placement of a limited number of available ladders. We first propose modifications to the existing models of buildings to incorporate ladders and ladder points (locations in the building where ladders can be placed). Next, we develop optimization formulations to solve the following evacuation planning problems when a limited number of ladders are available: (i) optimal deployment of a given number of ladders to minimize evacuation time and (ii) finding minimum number of ladders along with their locations necessary to evacuate a building in a given evacuation time. These problems, posed as integer linear programming formulations, are applied to two case studies to demonstrate the importance of using ladders. The results show that evacuation plans can be significantly improved by optimally placing ladders at the selected ladder points. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Elevator evacuation has been considered in high-rise building evacuation in the world, especially in China. Elevator safety has been widely studied for this purpose and technical standards are also available in different countries. However, it is critical to understand human behaviors in elevator evacuation before elevators can be used in building evacuation. It is expected that social relation (family, friend, classmate, etc.) will play an important role on evacuation behaviors. However, researches are largely missing on social relation and its impacts on movement and behaviors of the evacuees. This paper aims to investigate the crowd evacuation considering social relation. An evacuation experiment is conducted in a 11-storey office building. Participants who take part in the experiment include individuals, families and lovers. Evacuation behaviors especially decision-making as well as important factors affecting evacuees’ choices are discussed. Movement characteristics of evacuees in the stair are also analyzed. It is concluded that family members will take actions, such as take elevators or stairs, together. Females and evacuees in poor condition prefer to take the elevator during evacuation. Many pairs or small groups may be formed owing to social relations. The groups take more time to make decision. The members in small groups may block the traffic and slow down the speed of the crowd. Evacuation efficiency changes greatly considering small group behaviors and social relations. Experimental results are helpful for determining the effective rules and regulations in elevator evacuation in high-rise buildings.Copyright © 2016 by ASME

In this paper, social network analysis method is applied to verify that daily life social relation is an important factor affecting individual and group behaviors and evacuation efficiency. Evacuation experiments are conducted by carrying out 15 multi-mode collaborative evacuation drills including 6 in 2014 and 9 in 2015.The same group of 30 evacuees from a undergraduate class has been tracked for two years. Social network method is used to study following behavior, leading behavior and decision-making behavior in evacuation experiments. Through the questionnaires before and after all the evacuation drills, by defining the mutual trust degree (MTD) and being followed degree (BFD), the MTD relation matrix on daily life and the BFD relation matrix in evacuation can be constructed. Then normal social relation network graph and following relation network graph in emergency are drawn. Results show that small groups and leaders will be formed automatically during group evacuation, and the leaders in emergency demonstrate some certain stability, which has some relevance with gender and relations in normal situation. When two emergency exits are available during evacuation including stair and elevator, evacuation efficiency is best when the elevator and stair are located at the same side.

The safety of building occupants during and immediately after disasters, such as a major earthquake, is highly dependent on the way in which people interact with the damaged physical environment. While there are extensive studies on evacuation from undamaged structures and on structural behavior under seismic and other hazards, research on the influence of building damage on human evacuation behavior is limited. This study presents a framework by which models for buildings and human behavior can be coupled to analyze the dynamic influences of building damage on the evacuation process. The framework combines nonlinear dynamic finite-element modeling of structures, probabilistic modeling of damage, and agent-based modeling of human occupants to investigate the behavior of people as they interact with each other and with their dynamically-deteriorating environment as they attempt to evacuate the building. A case study is presented for a typical three-story commercial office building subjected to the ground motions of the 1994 Northridge, California earthquake. By using exit flow rates and other measures related to evacuation time histories as the outcomes of interest, it is shown how the proposed framework can be used as a tool to enhance building design and to develop recommendations for improved evacuation strategies. An important future extension of the work is expanding the framework for multiple buildings for community-wide models of postdisaster behavior.

With the development of modern cities, numerous buildings over 40-storey have been constructed in recent decades. Fire safety issues, especially evacuation, are of the major concerns for building designers, occupants, as well as governments. To ensure the safety of ultra high-rise building evacuation, different performance-based designs have been proposed. In this study, we propose a quantitative and viable elevator aided ultra-high rise building evacuation model which simulates both pedestrian movement and elevator transportation. After validation and calibration, the proposed Ultra high-rise building Evacuation with Elevators (UEE) model is adopted to explore two main evacuation strategies, i.e., phased evacuation and total evacuation with the aid of elevators. In these two strategies, refuge floor plays an important part because it not only provides a place for temporarily stop, but also for the transition from stair evacuation into elevator evacuation. Thus, the effect of refuge floor interval on the high-rise building evacuation process is further investigated. It is found that the interval design of refuge floors has a direct relation with the characteristics of the elevators and building occupants. In the case that a proper ratio of the building occupants is transported to the ground level by fast elevators while others are evacuated by stairs, the evacuation process can reach an optimized state.

With the development of modern cities, more and more ultra high-rise buildings have been built. Emergency evacuation of such buildings becomes one of the major concerns for building designers, building occupants and governments, especially after the disaster of 9/11. In this study we designed three experiments to investigate the process of ultra high-rise building evacuation. The experiments were performed in Shanghai World Financial Center, which is about 470 m tall. In the first experiment, the evacuation of a single pedestrian from the top floor to the first floor was performed. Movement characteristics such as mean speed and the time needed for evacuation were analyzed. In the second experiment, the mass evacuation process was captured by video cameras and the data were extracted out manually. The evacuees were distributed initially on floors 12–17, and were asked to evacuate through a staircase onto the refuge floor. On the refuge floor, i.e. the 6th floor, the evacuees were required to transit into another staircase to keep moving down to the ground floor. The characteristic space–time curves for each evacuee were extracted and analyzed. Parameters such as the mean speed and the evacuation time, as well as the characteristic of the transit process from one staircase to another were investigated. We at last mimicked and discussed the process of lift evacuation for an ultra high-rise building in the 3rd experiment. Evacuees located on the 41st and 65th floor were asked to move downward by stairs until they came to the refuge floors, where they would evacuate to the ground floor by lifts. The time characteristic of the mixed evacuation strategy was discussed. The basic data obtained from the experiments are useful for building designers and can be used to validate and refine ultra high-rise building evacuation models.

A few years ago, it began in Portugal the development of buildings fire risk analysis model, named MARIE, composed by eleven partial models according to the factors taking influence on that risk, having the model for the building egress (MEE), constituted by the building description model (MDE) and the occupants’ movement model (MMO), already been completed. During MMO development, and due to the absence of national data allowing the characterization and quantification of people’s movement kinematic aspects on adverse environments boosting building evacuation, as stated on fire emergency situations, it was adopted Predtechenskii & Milinskii (P & M) mathematical relations. MEE is, nowadays, being improved, regarding both MDE and MMO. These improvements affecting MMO are related, in one hand, with the occupants’ behaviour, and, in the other hand, with the possibility of application to staircases of the mathematical relations of velocity and flow with density deduced by Predtechenskii & Milinskii. Therefore, several evacuation drills performed at the University of Coimbra Campus were filmed and analysed, where 321 people were involved, in order to obtain the expressions describing the movement in stairs, and later comparing them with P & M’s expressions. 6 fig. 11 Tab 383-392 p. Volume 5, Número 4 DED/NAU Building Simulation. An International Journal

In recent times, high rise and complex buildings have raised concerns about fire damage. In most developed countries, the performance basis evacuation safety design is established by the characteristics of the buildings and their` occupants. Especially, the run-off coefficient is the major evacuate factor in determining the time required in case of fire and, the foreign countries suggest the standard and the process of the run-off coefficient through accumulated fire accident experiences and experimental analysis. However, performance based fire protection design is recently introduced to domestic and, the studies and standards inthe emergency situation are insufficient. In addition, it is limited to secure the reliable evacuation capacity when applying the international standards due to the different evacuation characteristics of the domestic occupants (escape behavior, physical size and socio-cultural situation). Precedent studies on the domestic occupants` evacuation characteristics are required to secure the safer and more efficient domestic buildings evacuation safety. Therefore, in this study, the experiment set was builtto obtain the run off coefficients in the evacuation elements to establish the domestic building evacuation safety design and run-off coefficient experiments with the domestic age-categorized groups were conducted. These experiment scan be used as a basis for establishing the run-off coefficients of performance evacuation safety design in future.

In this paper, a study on simulation of a boys’ dormitory building evacuation in case of emergency is carried out, using the evacuation simulation software Pathfinder 2011. With parameters set on the basis of the establishment of building models and their respective personnel, with the Steering model selected, and with different numbers of exits, the simulation results show that the time and evacuation numbers linearly correspond in a particular relationship; the rate of change of evacuation time along with the number of evacuations undergo dynamic growth in a certain number of intervals. Using the condition of saturation of evacuees, and carrying out the simulation and analysis of different numbers of exits, evacuees, and evacuation styles, where and when the highest risks are can be demonstrated, so as to optimize evacuations.

This paper describes the general characteristics of the agent-based models (ABM) approach to the simulation of building evacuations, and offers details of some popular computer codes for building evacuation. Contemporary ABM computer programming emphasising the characteristics of individuals and their propensities to act should be supplemented with codes informed by group-level dimensions such as norms, values, commitments to lines of action, leadership, and a sense of identification and membership in meaningful groups. The paper discusses social science considerations that need to be borne in mind when developing an ABM simulation of building evacuation in a disaster. It includes information on an ABM simulation of a disastrous incident: the fire in a US nightclub in Rhode Island in 2003. The model incorporates aspects of the physical environment in which the evacuation took place, the nature and spread of the fire and the smoke, information on individual and groups in the fire, and the impact of the den...

In this study, it was analyzed by a numerical analysis that plan/design consi-derations for ensuring the spectator safety of large arena audiences in a fire emergency evacuation plan. The latest issue, the ‘performance-based design’, fire and evacuation plan is important. But nowadays ‘Specification-based design’ is in common. In evacuation simulation, congestion of exit and aisle is ignored because only evacuation time of large-space is mainly analyzed. In smoke flow, ‘smoke filling effect’ tends to be overrated. From now on, when design a field house, it is needed not ‘smoke filling effect’ and ‘large-space evacuation’ analysis, but analyzing ‘whole building evacuation time’ for ensuring fire evacuation safety of spectator.Keywords:Fire simulation(화재시뮬레이션), Evacuation(피난대피), Performance based design (성능위주설계), B.I.M.：Building Information Modeling(건물정보모델링) †Corresponding author Tel.: +82-31-232-9590; fax: +82-31-232-9591 E-mail address: linecons@naver.com 기 호 설 명 t ：강하시간 [second]C ：비열 [kJ/kgK]A ：바닥면적 [㎡]Q ：Reynolds 수

This paper presents questionnaire survey results with evacuees in actual whole-building evacuation - not in a safety exercise - from a super-high-rise office building. Its purpose is to provide basic data for establishing special considerations in evacuation plans specific to super-high-rise buildings with increasingly long, complex evacuation routes. The building in which wholebuilding evacuation was actually implemented for reasons other than fire has 33 floors above the ground and 3 below, and was built in a local city in Japan. It is used by a single organization. The evacuation was implemented for the whole building, not an orderly evacuation basis, by judgment of the facility manager. Evacuees totaled 2,000. It was announced that elevators and stairs were available for use as evacuation facilities when the facility manager gave orders for evacuation. The stair-use ratio reached 80%, however, suggesting that the employees are recommended to use the stairs for evacuation and they recognize that the stairs are more reliable than the elevator in evacuation. Blocked movement of evacuees was observed, but to a moderate extent, because movement to the stairs ended before the evacuees from the upper stairs joined those from the lower floors, and the building has many stairs. In contrast, 60% of those who used elevators consider that the evacuation would be completed faster, indicating their expectations for shortened evacuation periods. Some cited physical and health reasons for evacuation by elevator. Use of elevators should be investigated for weaker evacuees.

The objective of this paper is to develop a methodology to quantify the time-varying post-quake aftershock threat in a manner consistent with the development of conventional design ground motion levels, which are typically based on a constant probability of exceedance of a given ground motion intensity. We use the frequency of collapse of a mainshock-damaged building in the aftershock environment as a proxy for the life-safety risk faced by an arbitrary building occupant. We demonstrate that the time-varying aftershock threat can be transformed to an equivalent constant collapse rate for a mainshock-damaged building by considering the total expected number of aftershock collapse events in the time interval of interest and a ‘social discount factor’, typically taken to be from 3% to 5%. The ability to quantify the time-varying life-safety risk in the aftershock environment in a manner compatible with existing building code provisions will allow informed building evacuation and re-occupancy decisions to be made. While this concept has been introduced for the aftershock environment, it may also be a potential solution to a wider class of safety problems involving transient life threats.

The increasing accessibility of buildings to people with disabilities requires that buildings are also designed and managed to provide accessible means of escape for all. In so doing, it is important to understand the capabilities of building occupants with disabilities to evacuate and their interaction with others. This is particularly important in high-rise buildings where occupants’ primary means of accessing upper floors, i.e. lifts, may not necessarily be the preferred route in a fire emergency. Until recently there has been little in-depth study of the evacuation of mixed ability populations in a large-scale emergency building evacuation. The evacuation of the World Trade Centre (WTC) on September 11, 2001 was one of the most significant evacuations of high-rise buildings in modern times. The UK High-rise Evacuation Evaluation Database (HEED) study aimed to capture the detailed and multifaceted behaviour and experiences of the evacuees in a relational database which would facilitate the answering of research questions relating to the evacuation of high-rise buildings, including questions relating to the evacuation of people with disabilities. The information stored in the HEED comprises pre-interview questionnaires, interview transcripts and coded time, location and experience data on 271 persons who evacuated the World Trade Centre on 9/11. This paper focuses on the behaviour and experiences of six evacuees of Towers 1 and 2, who declared a mobility impairment in their pre-interview questionnaire. The individuals’ physical and medical profiles, together with their fire safety awareness profiles, as determined from the pre-interview questionnaire, free flow and semi-structured interviews are presented, together with details of their experiences as they evacuated the towers. Their need for assistance, formation of groups with their assistors or others, perception of risk and the difficulties or otherwise that they encountered are also considered. Issues with respect to a definition of disability for fire evacuation planning/design, sufficiency of escape route widths, group behaviour, nature/delivery of training programmes and emergency preparedness are discussed.

Experiments have been performed to study pedestrian flow through bottlenecks under oversaturated conditions. The data underline a new phenomenon in pedestrian flows: when high-density conditions occur upstream of a bottleneck, the maximum capacity of the bottleneck (i.e. the maximum number of pedestrians that can flow through the bottleneck in a given time interval) can drop. This is referred to as “capacity drop” and should be carefully taken into account when dealing with building evacuation philosophy. Controlling the population density upstream of a bottleneck can maximise the flow through it (i.e. by avoiding capacity drop) and shorten the building evacuation time significantly. This paper focuses on alarm times and egress routes (in terms of their geometrical characteristics like length, width) as means for controlling population densities and therefore reducing building evacuation time. Specifically, the proposed methodology includes an optimisation algorithm that explores the research space (defined by all the possible Route-Alarm Time schedule plans where a Route-Alarm Time schedule plan is in turn defined by a set of alarm times and a set of egress routes) and aims to find the Route-Alarm Time schedule plan that minimises the building evacuation time. We call building evacuation time the temporal gap between the time the first person starts to egress the building until all people have reached an area of safety outside the building. A newly proposed movement model, embedded into the optimisation algorithm, allows the building evacuation time for a given Route-Alarm Time schedule plan to be assessed by simulating the egress dynamics. This movement model is able to reproduce the capacity drop phenomenon observed in the experimental work and can therefore assess the building evacuation time taking into account the capacities of the various bottlenecks adjusted to take into account the actual upstream densities. The optimisation algorithm, with the movement model embedded in it, has been implemented in an object-oriented simulator. The Route-Alarm Time schedule planning refers to a phased evacuation in a static environment where all the egress paths are viable and the pedestrian population is well-trained.

The buildings are rebuilt to be high-rise on a large scale.And the evacuation processes become long and complicated. A problem of evacuation planning spreads. On the other hand, the report about actual whole building evacuation is very little.This report is the questionnaire survey about the whole building evacuation performed actually in super-high-rise building. More than 80 % of persons also chose evacuation stairs in the case when elevator machines use were possible, and it was revealed that next time also chooses evacuation stairs.

A multi-stage time-varying quickest flow approach (MSTVQF) is established to estimate the minimal clearance time for evacuating the occupants of a building in an emergency situation. As an optimization tool, MSTVQF is especially appropriate for building evacuation planning. It is capable of finding the most efficient movement pattern in a complex building and can provide valuable information for the management to establish effective emergency management strategies including setting evacuation routes and the departure schedule in phased evacuation. Moreover, it can also assist the building designers to identify bottlenecks in an escape system. By adopting MSTVQF for analysis, the time-varying properties of a network that has been resolved to represent a building can be modeled. Accordingly, it can be used to analyze the effect of blocked exits caused by the development of fire in an evacuation analysis.

The need for effective evacuation of any building is of great importance in cases of emergency and risk. In this paper, a mathematical approach is developed and presented for the purpose of modelling and analyzing the evacuation process of public buildings. Total evacuation time as well as the risk of evacuees under different evacuation routings and conditions has been evaluated. Important aspects related to the nature of public buildings in case of emergency, concepts and standards related to travel distance, unit width, evacuation rate, and speed of movement are considered. Queuing network theory is the tool that has been used to model the situation. Consequently, performance analysis of the evacuation process has been carried out for some real cases. The results could be useful in the risk assessment for safe egress design of public buildings.

Augmented Reality enables people to remain connected with the physical environment they are in, and invites them to look at the world from new and alternative perspectives. There has been an increasing interest in emergency evacuation applications for mobile devices. Nearly all the smart phones these days are Wi-Fi and GPS enabled. In this paper, we propose a novel emergency evacuation system that will help people to safely evacuate a building in case of an emergency situation. It will further enhance knowledge and understanding of where the exits are in the building and safety evacuation procedures. We have applied mobile augmented reality (mobile AR) to create an application with Unity 3D gaming engine. We show how the mobile AR application is able to display a 3D model of the building and animation of people evacuation using markers and web camera. The system gives a visual representation of a building in 3D space, allowing people to see where exits are in the building through the use of a smart phone or tablets. Pilot studies were conducted with the system showing its partial success and demonstrated the effectiveness of the application in emergency evacuation. Our computer vision methods give good results when the markers are closer to the camera, but accuracy decreases when the markers are far away from the camera.