High-Rise Office Building Evacuation Planning: Human Factors Versus "Cutting Edge" Technologies

1994 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Jennings
2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 601-608
Author(s):  
Shinji Yagi ◽  

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.


High rise office building design is one of the essential buildings in construction industry due to the limited space especially in the urban area. After home, a high rise office building is an important space for human in modern era. Due to the issue of high energy consumption especially inefficient artificial light strategy, side-day lighting becomes the best solution for a high rise office building design. Despite providing efficient energy consumption, side-day lighting creates a positive impact to the worker as well as the office's indoor environment. Hence, this paper aims to explore the basic passive side-day lighting considerations that educate people especially for those who are involved in the building construction industry. Beside, this paper focuses on the passive design considerations due to the various advantages that not involved especially with complex electrical and mechanical system. A systematic literature review is the main methodology for this paper to identify the basic passive side-day lighting considerations for a high rise office building design. Base on this research, it revealed that eight elements for building design considerations should be applied to provide a better day lighting impact for a high rise office building design. Considerations for non-building design aspects should also need to be applied since those aspects contribute to produce a better day lighting impact for a high rise office building design.


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