System and Subsystems Used in the Engineering Approach of Human Evacuation in Case of Fire

The new approach of human evacuation in case of fire, the engineering one, offers additional possibilities of assessment for this activity included in the issue of fire safety of buildings. Being a relatively new field of study, less known to professionals specialized in fire safety (but quite well known to specialized researchers), fire safety engineering undergoes permanent reorganization at the level of concepts and procedures, information by mean of which it operate, due to the rapid accumulation of experience in this area of engineering activity; therefore, after countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA have provided to their specialists normative regulations specific to fire safety engineering, groups of specialists from these countries have joined their efforts to try reducing the differences between these regulations and give a unified, better conceptualized approach to fire safety engineering. The result: the development of International Fire Engineering Guidelines (last edition 2005). The systemic approach to fire safety in buildings outlined, once again, the possibility of modular organization of this field of study, the relations between modules depending on the objectives followed in a fire safety analysis for a specified building. This article intends to present in this modularized perspective, human evacuation in case of fire from a building designed for higher education, with a centrally located atrium.