Adequacy of Safe Egress Design Codes for Supertall Buildings

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 568-580
Author(s):  
Edgar C. L. Pang ◽  
◽  
Wan-Ki Chow
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Fire Safety ◽  
Safety Management ◽  
Tall Buildings ◽  
Emergency Evacuation ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
Commercial Building ◽  
Evacuation Time ◽  
Normal Heights ◽  
Evacuation Routes

Emergency evacuation for supertall buildings with heights over 200 m require a very long time for occupants to travel down the buildings. Occupants might jam into protected lobbies and staircases, extending the waiting time. There is not yet any code requirement specifically for emergency evacuation in supertall buildings, which are criticized for using the same codes for buildings with normal heights. Further, the evacuation design for several existing supertall buildings does not even follow prescriptive fire-safety codes. The underlying problems have not yet been addressed by thorough studies. Evacuation in such tall buildings in Hong Kong will be studied in this paper. The assumptions made in the local prescriptive codes for safe egress will be justified. Three buildings with evacuation design complying with the local codes are considered as examples. A commercial building, a hotel, and a residential block in Hong Kong are taken as examples. The key design parameters in the local codes are for 40 people evacuating with a flow rate of 1.1 person/s through the staircase between typical floors. The evacuation time from each floor to the protected lobby is assumed to be within 5 min. The evacuation times in different scenarios with these assumptions are calculated. Such assumptions do not hold under a high occupant load. The total evacuation time would be extended significantly when the travelling flows of occupants are blocked in any of the evacuation routes. Different fire-safety management schemes with staged evacuation, such as assigning higher priorities to evacuate lower or upper floors first, are evaluated. The results observed for safe egress are then discussed.

scholarly journals A Multistory Building Evacuation Model Based on Multiple-Factor Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Yang Zhou ◽  
Tanghong Wu ◽  
Gaofan Zhang ◽  
Zichuan Fan
Keyword(s):  
Functional Relationship ◽  
Emergency Evacuation ◽  
Multiple Factor Analysis ◽  
Time Step ◽  
Evacuation Time ◽  
Building Evacuation ◽  
Access Path ◽  
Multistory Building ◽  
Evacuation Model ◽  
Evacuation Routes

Emergency evacuation is an important issue in public security. To make a considerate plan, various situations are presented including blocking the accident area and letting the emergency access path available. In order to offer dynamic evacuation routes due to different circumstances, a multistory building evacuation model is proposed. Firstly, to analyse the patency of the building, an evacuation formula is applied after binary processing. The function of evacuation time and some other parameters is given by means of regression analysis. Secondly, the cellular automata (CA) algorithm was applied to illustrate the effect of the bottleneck. The response of evacuation time could be approximately optimized through calculating time step of the CA simulation. Finally, the value of maximum evacuation population density could be determined according to the analysis of CA simulation results, which was related to the switch state of the emergency channel. The emergency evacuation model was simulated by using the Louvre museum as an example. The results of the simulation presented some feasible evacuation routes in all kinds of situations. Furthermore, the functional relationship would also be given among evacuation time with the diversity of tourists, pedestrian density, and width of exits. It can give a different perspective that the multistory building evacuation model shows excellent adaptability to different circumstances.

scholarly journals Influence of Evacuation Walkway Design Parameters on Passenger Evacuation Time along Elevated Rail Transit Lines Using a Multi-Agent Simulation

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 6049 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zihua Pan ◽  
Qingchao Wei ◽  
Olav Torp ◽  
Albert Lau
Keyword(s):  
Safety Management ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
Rail Transit ◽  
Evacuation Time ◽  
Transit Systems ◽  
Risk Zone ◽  
Agent Simulation ◽  
Multi Agent ◽  
Time Fluctuation ◽  
Evacuation Safety

Passenger evacuation on elevated railway lines has always been an important issue for elevated rail transit safety management, because it is challenging to evacuate passengers efficiently in the event of man-made calamities and natural disasters. Therefore, an evacuation walkway has been designed as a primary solution to assist passenger evacuation during an emergency on elevated rail transit lines. However, investigations on how evacuation walkway designs influence passenger evacuation time are still limited. This study established two evacuation scenarios of interval evacuation on elevated rail transit lines and put forward a new evacuation time measurement method, based on the concept of ‘evacuation time for passengers leaving the evacuation walkway risk zone’. Then, the evacuation time for 90 combinations of entrance widths and walkway widths was simulated by a multi-agent evacuation simulator, Pathfinder, considering 1032 passengers being evacuated both unidirectionally and bidirectionally. The results show that the entrance width and walkway width have a combined effect on passenger evacuation time. An increase in the walkway width from 0.7 m to 1.5 m may potentially reduce the evacuation time by 54.5% in unidirectional evacuation, and 35.2% in bidirectional evacuation. An increase in the entrance width results in a noticeable evacuation time fluctuation when the walkway width is 0.7 and 0.8 m for both evacuation scenarios, while in a bidirectional evacuation, a noticeable fluctuation also can be observed when the walkway width is within the range of 1.4–1.5 m. According to the study, a potentially good design parameter combination for a newly built evacuation walkway is 1.3 m and 1.4 m for the walkway width and entrance width, respectively. The findings from this study may provide a useful reference in the optimization of the design of evacuation facilities and improvement of passenger evacuation safety in rail transit systems.

Risk Analysis and Evacuation Research on Crowded Students for Colleges and Universities' Emergencies

2010 ◽  
Vol 439-440 ◽  
pp. 766-771
Author(s):  
Yan Zhou ◽  
Jin Yu Wei
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Factors ◽  
Risk Model ◽  
Safety Management ◽  
Emergency Evacuation ◽  
Behavioral Characteristics ◽  
Safety Education ◽  
Unexpected Events ◽  
Evacuation Time ◽  
Fundamental Causes ◽  
Evacuation Management

This paper analyzes psychological and behavioral characteristics of the crowd when unexpected events happen, and combined with psychological factors, using methods of safety analysis, from the perspective of people, objects and management, analyzes causes of group accidents. Then, based on analysis above, this paper establishes a risk model, analyzes factors which affect evacuation time and risk of crowded students and finds out fundamental causes. Finally, using methods of safety management and safety education, from three aspects of hardware facilities, emergency evacuation management, and daily management, reasonable and practicable measures and advice are put forward, and are applied combined with an example.

scholarly journals PERILAKU TANGGAP KEBAKARAN PADA BANGUNAN KAMPUS

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-20
Author(s):  
Heru Sufianto ◽  
Agung Murti Nugroho ◽  
M Satya Aditama
Keyword(s):  
Fire Safety ◽  
Field Survey ◽  
Safety Management ◽  
Tall Buildings ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Safety Awareness ◽  
The University ◽  
Active Controls ◽  
Campus Building

Fires in buildings have significant impact on communities both socially and economically. In education facilities, fire incidents may instantly wipe out valuable scientific resources that were collected in years. Fire authorities, practitioners and relevant bodies have been addressed this issue by focusing on technical engineering approaches and requirements, more than human behaviour aspect. This study seeks the importance of human behaviour as pre-active and re-active controls for protecting campus building from fires. Number of tall buildings in Brawijaya University have been investigated and a number of occupants have been filled up the online questionnaire during field survey. This study suggested the improvement fire safety awareness of occupants, meanwhile fire safety management should be introduced and implemented consistently across management system in the university.

scholarly journals Study on Improved Measures for Fire Safety Management in Sports Facilities

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 139-147
Author(s):  
Woongi Hwang ◽  
Hoisik Shin ◽  
Junseo Yang
Keyword(s):  
Fire Safety ◽  
Safety Management ◽  
Far East ◽  
Sports Facilities ◽  
Safety Measures ◽  
The People ◽  
Evacuation Routes

Recently, there have been many fires in the facilities where the safety of the people should be prioritized, such as the Jecheon Sports Center, Ansan Far East Sports Center, and Futsal Stadium in Suwon. The fire incidents in sports facilities, such as in the Jecheon Sports Center, have affected a lot of lives due to various factors such as the closing of evacuation routes. This study investigated the management status of firefighting and safety measures through analysis of the fire cases in sports facilities used by unspecified number of people. We propose checklists and inspection manuals for common firefighting and safety measures in sports facilities, and post checklists in a location that can be easily seen by both people and users. We intend to contribute to the improvement of inspection management of sports facilities in terms of fire reduction and firefighting, and safety measures through inspection and posting.

Legislation aspects of fire safety management in Hong Kong

Facilities ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 22 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 149-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.C. Tsui ◽  
W.K. Chow
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Fire Safety ◽  
Safety Management

Performance-based fire safety evacuation of an auditorium facility using a theoretical calculation method

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abubakar S. Mahmoud ◽  
Muizz O. Sanni-Anibire ◽  
Mohammad A. Hassanain
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Theoretical Calculation ◽  
Fire Safety ◽  
Theoretical Method ◽  
Emergency Evacuation ◽  
Evacuation Time ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Safety Evacuation ◽  
In Fire

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a theoretical calculation for the emergency evacuation of an auditorium facility managed by a university in Saudi Arabia. Design/methodology/approach The authors reviewed the published literature to identify the sources of fire incidence, guidelines for means of escape in assembly occupancies and human behavior in fire emergencies. The theoretical method of the SFPE handbook to estimate the required evacuation time was subsequently applied to a case study of an auditorium facility managed by a university located in Saudi Arabia. Finally, the authors developed recommendations for the performance-based fire safety evacuation of the auditorium facility under review. Findings The study showed that a total of 6 minutes 39 seconds is needed to evacuate the whole auditorium. However, reviewed literature for assembly occupancies requires between 4 minutes 30 seconds and 6 minutes 24 seconds for total evacuation. Though, the calculated evacuation time is close to generally acceptable limits. It was noted that overcrowding and bottlenecks may be formed in some of the exit routes. Originality/value This paper will stimulate and increase research and industry concern for performance-based design of assembly-type facilities. This will be of significant value to designers, engineers, facilities managers, and owners in ensuring the safety of occupants in assembly-type facilities.

scholarly journals Simulation of Emergency Evacuation from Construction Site of Prefabricated Buildings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mufeng XIAO ◽  
Xihua ZHOU ◽  
Xinxin PAN ◽  
Yanan WANG ◽  
Xianlin LI ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Evacuation ◽  
Building Construction ◽  
Construction Site ◽  
Site Management ◽  
Evacuation Time ◽  
Co Concentration ◽  
Physical Attributes ◽  
Evacuation Routes ◽  
Time Required ◽  
Prefabricated Building

Abstract To ensure the safe construction of prefabricated buildings and improve the efficiency of the safe evacuation of construction personnel after a fire caused by improper operation during construction, this study used the PyroSim software to numerically simulate a fire situation based on the size and volume of a prefabricated building construction site. The variation rules of smoke visibility, CO concentration, and ambient temperature in the construction site of prefabricated buildings were analyzed and the available safe evacuation time was determined. Moreover, the Pathfinder software was used for simulation in combination with the physical attributes of personnel, evacuation speed, and personnel proportions. The time required for safe evacuation was determined and the factors influencing the evacuation time, such as the quantity and location of stacked prefabricated components, machinery, and appliances, and the number of on-site construction personnel, were analyzed. The results reveal that the original layout of the prefabricated building construction site cannot facilitate the safe evacuation of all construction personnel. The bottleneck area for the evacuation of construction personnel is the indoor corridor and evacuation stairway. The quantity and location of stacked items at the construction site greatly influence the evacuation time. When the number of construction personnel on each floor reaches a certain value, restrictions should be imposed. The results obtained by this study can provide the theoretical basis for the rational planning of evacuation routes and construction site management.

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