Evacuation modelling

Calibration and validation of dynamic assignment models to simulate urban road transport systems in ordinary conditions are still an open issue. This problem is further emphasized in the case of transport systems analysis in emergency conditions, as there are no standardised methods and there is a lack of experience of real-world applications. The paper presents a DA model and a procedure able to simulate transport supply and transport supply – travel demand interaction of an urban road transport system in emergency conditions. The transport supply models are calibrated and validated through traffic data observed during a real-world evacuation experiment conducted in the town of Melito di Porto Salvo (Italy). The DA model has been applied in order to reproduce the observed real-world evacuation experiment and a set of indicators for testing the performance of a road network in emergency conditions is estimated. We think that the findings reported in the paper represent a contribution in the field of transportation systems analysis in emergency conditions at urban scale. The specified and calibrated DA model and the applied set of indicators can be a useful tool to support the planning and management of road networks and mobility in emergency conditions.

Traffic signal setting is an important element in traffic planning of urban road networks in ordinary conditions and/or in emergency conditions. As traffic signal setting affects user behaviour mainly at the path choice dimension, this dependence has to be studied by means of assignment models. We thus present a system of models and procedures for signal setting optimization with assignment of travel demand to a congested road transport network. Two interacting procedures are developed to solve the system of models: (i) an optimization procedure to obtain an optimal configuration of signal setting parameters and (ii) an assignment procedure, incorporating a path choice model with explicit path enumeration and a flow propagation model, to capture the effects of signal setting configuration on user path choice behaviour. The system of models and procedures is applied and validated on a real test site, where the transport system is in dynamic conditions due to the time-varying road network and travel demand. The test site is a portion of a small-size town where the population needs to be evacuated due to an imminent calamitous event. The results show considerable reductions in total delays on the network and evacuation times in the case of optimized signal setting parameters.

SUMMARY This article explores how egress drills—specifically those related to fire incidents—are currently used, their impact on safety levels, and the insights gained from them. It is suggested that neither the merits of egress drills are well understood, nor the impact on egress performance well characterized. In addition, the manner in which they are conducted varies both between and within regulatory jurisdictions. By investigating their strengths and limitations, this article suggests opportunities for their enhancement possibly through the use of other egress models to support and expand upon the benefits provided. It is by no means suggested that drills are not important to evacuation safety —only that their inconsistent use and the interpretation of the results produced may mean we (as researchers, practitioners, regulators, and stakeholders) are not getting the maximum benefit out of this important tool.

Performance-based design (PBD) has been playing an important function in fire safety of buildings, and how to accurately simulate occupants’ behavior gains attention from fire engineers. With booming development of evacuation software, developing an extensive database for evacuation models is imperative and urgent. According to the literature, the whole process of evacuation includes several stages, such as pre-movement, action period, walking period, etc. In order to develop an evacuation model, data in these stages concerning pre-movement time, walking speed, occupant characteristics, actions and exit choice decisions are compiled in this paper. These data can be used as input parameters for evacuation models in PBD or in validating the evacuation models’ accuracy.

Rapidly changing detrimental safety conditions on an evacuation route might cause casualties and provoke panic. This is why we need to take into account these conditions for real-time route optimization. The objective of this paper is to facilitate efficient people evacuation through dynamic optimization of evacuation routes based on the safety conditions on the route and stress-related evacuees' responses to the same. We propose a multi-agent based evacuation route optimization architecture for smart space networks that considers the influence of stress on human reactions to the recommended routes. This architecture is meant as a real-time decision support in route selection that recommends routes to evacuees, possibly through smart phone or smart building displays. The functioning of the architecture is shown on an example of a simple smart space network.

This dissertation focuses on safety planning aspects, on a city level, aiming to reduce the related seismic risks. The main object of this project is the research on and evaluation of civil protection in the area of Acharnes, regarding preparedness plans. Exploring the specificities of the examined area, the strengths and weaknesses of the city were highlighted, whereas the consequences from previous disasters were taken into account for the suggestions made. Upon evaluating current conditions in terms of city preparedness, it became possible to establish a comprehensive suggestion of an emergency management plan for the area of Acharnes. The suggested plan, which was processed for Menidi city, consists of evacuation shelters and evacuation routes aiming to strengthen city preparedness and the safety of its residents. The methodology applied focus on checking the adequacy of shelters, their capacity and location in order to keep residents safe. Regarding the evacuation routes, the aspects checked were the width of main roads and the effectiveness of the road network during peak time as well as the area density, both in terms of population and of structures involved. The results indicated that even though the area has very few public spaces, the suggested shelters are ideal for the residents given that they are of sufficient capacity whereas they are also located within the desired distance. The evacuation routes have been chosen so as to keep the population safe, leading the residents to the suggested shelters. The suggested plan applies ideally to the particular nature of the area and its organization in terms of safety measures, given that it takes into account the current status of the city.

SUMMARY This article explores how egress drills—specifically those related to fire incidents—are currently used, their impact on safety levels, and the insights gained from them. It is suggested that neither the merits of egress drills are well understood, nor the impact on egress performance well characterized. In addition, the manner in which they are conducted varies both between and within regulatory jurisdictions. By investigating their strengths and limitations, this article suggests opportunities for their enhancement possibly through the use of other egress models to support and expand upon the benefits provided. It is by no means suggested that drills are not important to evacuation safety —only that their inconsistent use and the interpretation of the results produced may mean we (as researchers, practitioners, regulators, and stakeholders) are not getting the maximum benefit out of this important tool.

This paper presents a description of a new agent based elevator sub-model developed as part of the buildingEXODUS software intended for both evacuation and circulation applications. A description of each component of the newly developed model is presented, including the elevator kinematics and associated pedestrian behaviour. The elevator model is then used to investigate a series of full building evacuation scenarios based on a hypothetical 50 floor building with four staircases and a population of 7,840 agents. The analysis explores the relative merits of using up to 32 elevators (arranged in four banks) and various egress strategies to evacuate the entire building population. Findings from the investigation suggest that the most efficient evacuation strategy utilises a combination of elevators and stairs to empty the building and clear the upper half of the building in minimum time. Combined stair elevator evacuation times have been shown to be as much as 50% faster than stair only evacuation times.

The design and development of solar steam pump for mainly irrigation application by using a
parabolic dish solar water heater by heating the water at a required temperature until the water
changes to steam is designed in this thesis. This thesis focuses mainly using the renewable
energy sources from the sun and produce environmental friendly source of energy. This
parabolic solar water heater is simple to design, cheap and effective. The main part of the heater,
the collector can have any shiny material as long as it refracts the sun’s rays. In this project a
parabolic solar concentrator was designed to heat water in absorber at the focal point. So, the
project concerns the study of transformation of solar energy into thermal energy and then to
mechanical energy to deliver the underground water or water from the cliff through the
centrifugal pump. The steam flows through the steam pipe in to steam engine. When the inlet
valve opens due to the rotation of wheel (starter), the steam enters the buffer vessel when exhaust
valve closed. So, steam pushes the piston and passes through the exhaust valve and then the cam
and cam shaft rotates. Since, cam shaft is connected with impeller shaft of the pump by belt; due
to cam shaft rotation the centrifugal pump receives the water from 8m depth from ground so as
save a large amount man power, fuel and electricity. This project is done primarily for DMU and
surrounding. However, in Ethiopia Smallholder farmers can benefit from affordable irrigation
pump systems in low income as they enable cultivation of high value crops during dry season.

SUMMARY This article explores how egress drills—specifically those related to fire incidents—are currently used, their impact on safety levels, and the insights gained from them. It is suggested that neither the merits of egress drills are well understood, nor the impact on egress performance well characterized. In addition, the manner in which they are conducted varies both between and within regulatory jurisdictions. By investigating their strengths and limitations, this article suggests opportunities for their enhancement possibly through the use of other egress models to support and expand upon the benefits provided. It is by no means suggested that drills are not important to evacuation safety —only that their inconsistent use and the interpretation of the results produced may mean we (as researchers, practitioners, regulators, and stakeholders) are not getting the maximum benefit out of this important tool.

Despite recent technological advancements in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries, the number of fire-caused fatalities in residential and commercial buildings in the United States over the last decade has consistently been an order of magnitude higher than fatalities caused by all other types of natural disasters combined. In this research, EvacuSafe is developed as a tool for designers to allow for layout optimization of buildings and facilities in terms of their evacuation safety performance. Contributions of this research include the development and validation of two spatiotemporal risk indices to quantify the safety of the egress routes and individual building compartments. Other unique advantages of EvacuSafe include the seamless integration of fire dynamics simulation, agent-based crowd simulation and building information models (BIM) using IFC data structures, allowing EvacuSafe to be readily used by designers to analyze a building layout design under various fire scenarios and for layout design optimization based on multiple safety criteria. The development of the framework, the risk indices, and the IFC-based integration is illustrated and validated through a case study on a two-story office building with 59 compartments. The results of the implementation show that the EvacuSafe is a valuable tool for evacuation design and planning that provides a more comprehensive evaluation of the evacuation performance in comparison to the existing indices and safety measures in the industry.

A dissertation submitted to the Doctoral Programme in Informatics Engineering (ProDEI), Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Thesis Supervisor: Rosaldo J. F. Rossetti, PhD (FEUP). Thesis Co-Supervisor: A. Leça Coelho, PhD (LNEC).

Abstract
This thesis proposes the use of Serious Games as a behaviour elicitation tool in addition to the traditional methods such as direct observations or stated-preference questionnaires. The resulting knowledge is needed to improve behavioural models of intelligent agents mimicking pedestrians. From the literature review and subsequent gap analysis, a methodological approach was envisaged leading to the Conceptualisation of a novel methodology for human behaviour elicitation coined SPEED (Simulation of Pedestrians and Elicitation of their Emergent Dynamics) aimed at revealing human behaviour and capturing the complex activities of pedestrians in the real world. As a case study, the behaviour of pedestrians when searching the best path to exit from a building was chosen. Building egress, or evacuation, has gained increasing interest by the research community, with important implications to architecture and building management, related to safety. Stakeholders, including architects and fire engineers, need simulation tools to validate building safety, namely evacuation simulators. The agent-based evacuation simulators, although attempting to implement some sort of intelligence into the agents mimicking humans, lack realism and knowledge on behavioural aspects related to humans. SPEED proposes to address this problem, using Serious Games. A set of experiments conceived with the help of an international expert panel, based on the Delphi method, were put up to test the methodology. After a pilot test, three experiments were made using Serious Games and questionnaires. The results were statistically analysed evidencing the subjects preferences and applied into an agent-based simulator developed using NetLogo. These agents were modelled by using the peer-designed agents (PDA) concept that emerged recently within the artificial intelligence community. The SPEED approach can be used for knowledge elicitation of pedestrian behaviours in other contexts, besides egress, within social simulation, based on the PDA concept.

Keywords: Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation, Behavioural Modelling, Behavioural Elicitation, Serious Games, Evacuation Scenarios.

Crowd evacuation in emergencies may lead to fatalities if the evacuation plans were not tested and evaluated. Traditionally, evacuation drills have been, and still are, being used to assess evacuation plans. However, in recent years the simulation of evacuation plans during emergencies has emerged as a strong alternative that is cost effective and potentially more accurate. Agent-Based Simulation (ABS) is the preferred type of simulation for evacuation scenarios, due to its ability to model individual decision-making and social behaviour. In this paper we conduct meta-analysis of eighty-one peer-reviewed papers published between 2009 and 2019 that used ABS to model pedestrian evacuation. Our analysis assesses the current state-of-art and identifies opportunities for improvement. We identify seven dimensions over which the surveyed papers agree or differ. The dimensions include purpose of the simulation, type of emergency and environment considerations, type and scale of evacuated space, simulation software used, agents’ characteristics and behaviour, support of evacuation policies, and analysis and validation. We conduct meta-analysis of the surveyed papers along the identified dimensions. One of the main findings of our analysis is the lack of a standardized validation methodology for ABS of emergency evacuation.

One of the primary objectives of fire safety is to guarantee the evacuation of all the occupants from a building safely. Although fire safety rules and regulations exist, they remain insufficient to guarantee the safety of all building occupants and do not prevent the dramatic events to be repeated. Especially in health care facilities, e.g. hospitals, care homes, etc., the evacuation procedure is more complex than in an ordinary building. This is due to multiple reasons such as the large number of patients requiring assistance to evacuate or the time required to prepare patients for assisted evacuation. Traditionally, hospitals focused on horizontal evacuation. Patients should initially be moved from areas of risk to safe areas. Furthermore, staff to occupant ratio may be low, especially at night, limiting the ability to instigate a rapid staff response and evacuation of occupants. Considering the limited number of studies on assisted evacuations, this work aims to provide a deeper insight on the modeling issues to simulate such an event. Based upon a preliminary risk analysis using the Fire Risk Assessment Method for Engineering (FRAME), the most critical floor will be selected and modeled using Pathfinder, an agent-based evacuation model. Furthermore, the impact of different percentage of People with Reduced Mobility will be investigated. Moreover, since the number of staff may significantly vary in the same scenarios (e.g. during the night), different ratios of staff to occupant's will be studied to show the impact of this parameter on the evacuation process.

Herding behaviour during exit choice is investigated.A theoretical explanation of herding behaviour is provided.Different aptitudes to herd have been found and analysed.A logit model to predict the occurrences of herding behaviour is proposed.Findings of this work prove that environmental and personal variables influence herding behaviour.Modelling human behaviour in emergencies has become an important issue in safety engineering. Good behavioural models can help increase the safety of transportation systems and buildings in extreme situations like fires or terrorist attacks. Although it is well known that the interaction with other decision makers affects human behaviour, the role of social influences during evacuations still needs to be investigated. This paper contributes to fill this gap by analysing the occurrence of Herding Behaviour (HB) in exit choice. Theoretical explanations of HB are presented together with some modelling approaches used in different fields where HB is relevant. A discrete choice stated preference experiment is then carried out to study the role of HB in the decision-making process concerning exit choice during evacuation. A binary logit model is proposed showing that the occurrences of HB are affected by both environmental and personal factors. In particular, the model shows that the personal aptitude to HB can have a key role in selecting an exit.

Catastrophic events in the United States have highlighted numerous issues regarding effective emergency evacuations. In existing studies, individuals with disabilities have not been a significant feature of evacuation investigations due to the lack of empirical data and thus their evacuation needs have been generally overlooked. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how effectively the built environment accommodates the needs of individuals with disabilities during emergency evacuations. Specifically, the difference between a homogeneous population and a heterogeneous population which includes individuals with disabilities was explored in terms of time to egress via an agent-based microsimulation. This model can consider several types of disabilities explicitly in terms of speed, ability to negotiate the environment, and psychological profile depending on type of disability. The model was applied for a real four story office building. The results of simulation experiments show that there is a significant difference between mean evacuation time for homogenous and heterogeneous populations. An increase in population size leads to an increased difference. Additionally, results demonstrate that the fourth floor of the building has the worst performance among other floors and persons who use wheelchairs are most at risk during emergency evacuation process.

"ABSTRACT (contact the author for a copy of the full paper)

Cultural and historical structures present special problems for fire safety. Unlike conventional buildings, safety of the building and contents often assumes social values which may rival the safety of the occupants. Higher risks to occupants are routinely permitted in order to avoid destroying the historical fabric of the experience. However these risks are rarely quantified and may be affected by Curators’ (Historic building operators) inappropriate reliance on relatively ineffective technical measures. This is often encouraged by regulators and codes that may lack either jurisdiction over older buildings or not have useful analytical tools for safety in older buildings.
Fires may be started by accident, arson, war or terrorism. In the modern era, there is a greater appreciation of the historic heritage contained in older buildings, but at the same time some hazards has increased and some precautions have been neglected. In many cases, (such as painted ceilings) the difference between building and contents may be very small. Exit pathways are very different from modern buildings and exits may not be easily recognized.

The evacuation problems of historic buildings are unusually severe. Occupants of historic buildings are usually alert but often elderly and totally unfamiliar with the surroundings. Many are often tourists from a wide variety of countries and cultural backgrounds. Handicaps are common. Historic buildings are used as assembly occupancies for wedding concerts receptions or other celebrations.
The contents of historic buildings often include priceless works of art and other historical artifacts. Buildings often include libraries archives or similar collections. Curators who lack familiarity with fires my over estimate the damage that water can do and under estimate the damage from fire or smoke.

This combination of over reliance on inadequate and inappropriate technical measures and very high occupancy loads can produce enormous conflicts in the operational problem of evacuating people and protecting the structure at the same time.
The operational problem of evacuating people versus protecting the historic structures and contents may be overlooked in the creation of overoptimistic fire plans. As just one example the existing staff often do not have clearly delineated tasks in a fire emergency. The precise balance between evacuation and property protection may not be spelled out in a way that creates an optimum response.
The problem needs to be addressed on several levels. Fire and Evacuation models may be capable of describing the magnitude of the fire risk to the occupants. However few such buildings have the kind of exit systems and conditions that are routinely used in the validation of evacuation models. Secure exit paths may be almost unknown. At every stage in the fire response staff may be needed to direct an evacuation in accordance with rapidly changing conditions. Creation of effective staff response requires what has been described as a command and control environment. In such an environment evacuation decisions are made dynamically (command) and implemented by suitable Control systems. We therefore explore the potential for use of evacuation models in a dynamic command and control environment applicable to historic structures. We contrast the assumptions routinely made in models with the reality of historic buildings. The outcome of such an effort are a series of specific requirements for the adaptation of evacuation models to the historic environment. A small sample of high value historic structures with historic contents can be used to illustrate the evacuation problem.

The Representative buildings we explore are :

• Doges Palace Venice: a very large historic building with complex exits that contains permanent artwork and is used for Public receptions. Major problems include very large spaces used for assembly occupancy, tours looping through the tiny corridors of the prison and hidden spaces.
• Ducal Palace Urbino: big and complex historic building that now contains important art collection.
• Palazzo Vecchio Florence: Former city hall now art museum still used for assemblies.
• Hohensalzburg Fortress Salzburg Austria: a rambling episcopal residence and fortress on the top of a defensive hill.
• Uffizi Gallery Florence: World renowned art collection in a Renaissance office building converted to an art gallery hundreds of years ago.
• Ca’ Rezzonico Venice: very large private home (palazzo) converted to an art gallery.
• Landeszeughaus Graz: 5 story 16th century wooden Armory with priceless collection of Weapons.

For technical reasons we have deliberately excluded Churches and similar religious buildings from this analysis but the remaining buildings illustrate a wide range of potential evacuation problems. It should be noted that this is not in any way an analysis of the current level of fire protection or evacuation planning in these buildings, but instead analyzes the potential for command & control evacuations and the problem of integrating command and control into models.

For a pedestrian evacuation in a historic building the following command and control functions might be relevant.

• Prepare –take action conducive to the evacuation.
• Start- Starting an evacuation requires giving a command with a directional component.
• Halt- Halting and evacuation flow is often necessary to avoid chaos or to prepare for a redirection of the flow.
• Divert- Change the direction of an evacuation.
• Reverse Reversing an evacuation flow is one of the most complex and difficult maneuvers but may be necessary if the evacuation route is blocked and there are no alternatives."

The effectiveness of an evacuation plan is a central concern of emergency management agencies. Methodologies for assessing and optimizing the space–time use efficiency of an evacuation plan have yet to be studied satisfactorily. To this end, this paper proposes an
assessment metric and uses it for the optimization of evacuation plans. First, we define a space–time use efficiency metric on the basis of trajectories on road segments and intersections.  The metric measures the usage of an evacuation network by supporting a trajectory-based analysis of the competing behaviors of vehicles and pedestrians in a hybrid pedestrian-vehicle simulation. Secondly, we present a two-tier hybrid multi-objective optimization algorithm to plan vehicle and pedestrian turning movement directions in an integrated road and building-interior network for the purpose of making decisions about evacuation plans. This algorithm has three objectives: (i) minimizing average evacuation time, (ii) minimizing the overall length traveled, and (iii) maximizing space–time use efficiency in the evacuation network. The stadium at the Wuhan Sports Centre in China and its adjacent road network were chosen as the study environment. A total of 23,362 evacuees and 1362 vehicles were assumed for the evacuation experiments. The analysis results suggest that intra-intersection evacuation flows can significantly influence the
space–time use efficiency of a evacuation plan. The proposed space–time use efficiency evaluation approach provides a practical method of measuring the effectiveness of evacuation plans.

Tsunami vertical evacuation is an important strategy for enhancing disaster preparedness because it provides an alternative to evacuation inland or to high ground in areas at risk of local tsunami. A large number of tsunami vertical evacuation buildings provided safe refuge in the inundation zone during and immediately after the Great East Japan tsunami on March 11th 2011. This paper discusses observations of such buildings in connection with themes that arose during semi-structured interviews with local disaster prevention and emergency services officials in Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures in October 2011. The implementation of key factors in the development of tsunami vertical evacuation strategies are assessed with reference to previously published guidelines, enabling lessons to be applied in the current and future development of such strategies internationally. The most important factors for designating tsunami vertical evacuation buildings are that they be reinforced concrete construction with sufficient height in relation to inundation depth. Also important to the success of such vertical evacuation strategies are community engagement, building owner agreement, consistent and clear signage, 24-hour access and evacuee welfare.

In the face of a natural or man-made disaster, evacuation planning refers to the process of reallocating the endangered population to a set of safe places, often in a hurry. Such a task needs proper preparation, execution, and most definitely a post-disaster response. We have contributed a new taxonomy of the evacuation planning problem and categorized available solutions. Evacuation routing is part of the bigger problem that finds the best routes to relocate the endangered population to safety. Given circumstances, even the tiniest improvement in evacuation routing during execution can save many lives. Therefore, different research communities are looking at this particular problem from their own viewpoints hoping to design a better practical solution.
We propose a new method to perform evacuation routing efficiently under capacity constraints. Traditionally, simulation software or shortest path routing combined with zonal scheduling have been used to solve routing problems. Our method utilizes a state-of-the-art algorithm to connect each source node to its nearest destination. It also intelligently takes into account transportation network capacity and traffic flow to minimize congestion and system-wide transportation times. We have compared our method with previous routing algorithms and a common simulation method in a static environment. We show that our algorithm generates reliable and realistic routes and decreases transportation time by at least an order of magnitude, without any loss of performance.
We also define the dynamic evacuation routing problem and propose a solution. The dynamic solution is capable of updating routes if the network topology is changed during the evacuation process. Effectively, it can solve the evacuation problem for a
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moving disaster. We argue that an ideal evacuation routing algorithm should be able to generate realistic and efficient routes in a dynamic environment because changes to the road network are likely to happen after natural disasters. For example if a main road is blocked during a flood, the evacuation routing algorithm updates the plan based on this change in the road network and pushes the changed routes to the corresponding evacuees.
In this dissertation we discuss evacuation routing and how it is connected to different aspects of the evacuation planning problem. Major works in this field have been studied and a better algorithm has been developed. The new algorithm’s performance and running time is iteratively improved and reported along with a comparison with previous works. The algorithm is extended to also solve the problem in a dynamic environment. Together these new developments pave the path for future researchers to study the evacuation problem and to integrate it into urban transportation services. Hopefully one day we can save more lives than before when future disasters occur.

Many if not most fire evacuation models are relatively insensitive to the complexity of human behavior in the built environment.    The complexity of human behavior  and  the very long feedback loop on building  disasters can lead to the approval of structures that have massive inherent vulnerabilities.
Buildings last a very long time. How does the designer  propose to validate the model  for the lifetime of the building? What keeps the occupant characteristics within the range proposed by the engineer?  What keeps the reactions of the occupants  predictable in the future based on  the reactions of people with the current characteristics?  Fire evacuation  models routinely include what is claimed to be “engineering judgment”.  But while engineering judgment is well designed to interpolate data between known data points in the presence of an adequate covering law, it cannot be extended to extrapolating from mere observational data in the absence of a suitable “covering law”. 

This is especially true with regards to complex structures, i.e. buildings that involve complex variables that lack supporting data or are difficult to predict. We need better tools to understand the link between people and the built environment. In the process of abstraction and simplification, significant details and complex variables tend to be lost leading the models to overoptimistic outputs.

Some modelers may think that the inputs to behavioral  models represent universal reality and they do not take into account Unknown Unknowns, which include:
• Wayfinding in unconventional evacuation paths (old and new buildings)
• Unconventional walking surface (old buildings)
• Cultural confusion (old and new buildings, e.g. airports)
• Unpredictable human behaviors

This paper will illustrate a small portion of this core issue in the use of behavioral models.  We examine the assumptions routinely used in such models when compared to the reality of complex structures.

In the UK, Fire Safety Strategies (FSS) for buildings have been adopting fire engineering solutions to address complex issues. These issues are commonly related to fire, such as: positioning and dimensioning of smoke vent extractors, atria dimensions, etc. Nevertheless, in terms of means of escape, the FSS appear to be attached to a more prescriptive approach. In reality, the principal building regulations document for fire safety in the UK, well known as Approved Document B (AD B), is essentially prescriptive in nature. And this is the main source of information when defining the exits locations; which takes the maximum travel distance as the key-factor to establish the escape routes. Probably, for this reason, in many real cases, the building regulators seem to be reluctant to alternative solutions when come to define the exits locations. In the other hand, the British Standards, such as BS 7974, already present methodologies to enable fire engineering solutions. Nevertheless, the exits locations are not covered. Therefore, this paper presents an alternative approach to the maximum travel distance when defining the exits locations. This approach is based on the use of the relative distance between exits (RDBE). The author has shown previously that the relative distance between exits do impact the evacuation efficiency, especially in high dense populated environments. In this paper, a case study based on the AD B is analysed through evacuation modelling. The results have shown that the exits locations, when defined by the RDBE, can provide safe means of escape.

Objective: This study examines the results of studies of selected worldwide legal acts stipulating the distances between escape routes in road tunnels, as well as the results of the verification of selected legal restrictions resulting from numerical model simulations of hypothesised fire scenarios. Introduction: The issues of the distances between escape routes' significantly affecting the timing of self-rescue activities during fires in road tunnels, and related safety matters during evacuation activities, are described in the present study. These distances are controlled in Poland by the Regulation of the Ministry of Transport, Construction and Maritime Economy of 30 May 2000 on the technical conditions of road engineering objects and their locations (Journal of Laws No. 63, item 735, as amended). According to the Regulation in question, the distance between escape routes should not exceed 500 m, which, in the light of worldwide legislative acts, is one of the least rigorous requirements. The distance between escape routes depends on numerous factors and the most important are: type of vehicles passing the tunnel, traffic congestion, ventilation, heat release rate, fire-detection system and geometrical parameters. The differences between the legal acts are the basis of the described research topic. Methodology: Analyses of selected worldwide legal acts and numerical modelling in order to check the safety conditions during evacuation were carried out for the adopted escape route variants. The time of the critical state reach in tunnels was determined and it was checked whether people were still present in tunnel after this time. Two types of tools were used: the Fire Dynamic Simulator program for assessing the time of reaching the critical environmental state, and the Pathfinder program for evacuation time calculation. Conclusions: The results of the completed analyses proved that assuring safety during self-rescue activities road tunnels ≥ 1500 long without escape roads or with escape routes distanced every 500 m was not possible. For the considered fire scenario in question and assuming a detection time and alarm equal to 120 s, 250 m between escape routes is sufficient to guarantee safe evacuation from tunnels on fire. Furthermore, the calculation of the distance between escape routes for a given tunnel should be preceded by a risk analysis during the design stage.

Understanding evacuation practices and outcomes helps crisis and disaster personnel plan, manage, and rebuild during disasters. Yet the recent expansion in the number of information and communication technologies (ICTs) available to individuals and organizations has changed the speed and reach of evacuation-related messages. This study explores ICTs' influences on evacuation decision-making and traffic congestion. Drawing from both social science and transportation science, we develop a model representative of individual decision making outcomes based on the amount of ICT use, evacuation sources, and the degree of evacuation urgency. We compare the evacuation responses when individuals receive both advance notice of evacuation (ANE) and urgent evacuation (UE) messages under conditions of no ICTs and prolific ICT use. Our findings from the scenarios when there is widespread ICT use reveal a shift in the evacuation timescale , resulting in traffic congestion early in the evacuation cycle. The effects of this congestion in urgent situations are significantly worse than traffic congestion in the advance notice condition. Even under conditions where face-to-face communication is the only option, evacuations still occur, but at a slower rate, and there are virtually no traffic congestion issues. Our discussion elaborates on the theoretical contributions and focuses on how ICTs have changed evacuation

BriteEuram project 97-4229 “MEPdesign” WP2c, Danish Maritime Institute report.

The main purpose of work package 2c on “group binding” in the MEPdesign project (Brite/EuRam project BE97-4229) is to provide data on the possible effects of “group binding” for the mustering and evacuation simulation model developed by Quasar. “Group binding” in this project refers to the tendency of social groups like families to stay together and – more critically – to go looking for each other in case of emergencies. The importance of the effects of group binding is that passengers who insist on staying in an area waiting for others will cause delays in evacuation and passengers searching the ship will create counter-streams to the planned muster and escape routes. In the report, estimations of these effects of group binding have been constructed from different types of indirect evidence about passenger behaviour in emergencies. Counter-streams will also arise because passengers might misinterpret or overlook muster signs and other emergency signs on board the ship, and we also have some indirect evidence on such problems of wayfinding (supplementing the
experimental data on wayfinding problems that have been reported by TNO).

Working at heights not only implies working in a dangerous environment where there are risks of falling people and objects, as well as possible extra risks related to the environment or other work operations. When we are at heights, even if no event such as a fall of an operator has been verified, we are always subject to the possible major contingencies to which the industrial zones, structures and machinery are subject. To make some specific examples, let us remember that many works at heights are carried out in places that have the potential to trigger a fire or explosion, seismic geographical areas or areas subject to chemical spills or floods, structures or machinery that could present critical failures involving the entrapment of people doing activities at heights. From here, the need to have well-defined protocols for the evacuation from heights of the personnel involved becomes evident, within our emergency care plans, which of course cannot only consider the implementation of rescues for injured people or victims.

There are many hazards on a ship that makes an emergency evacuation process inevitable. Providing safe and effective evacuation of passengers from ships in an emergency situation becomes critical. Handling a real ship evacuation practice is often unaffordable as modelling such an environment is very expensive and may cause severe distress to participants. As an alternative, simulation models have been used to overwhelm the issue above in recent years. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel simulation-based methodology for evaluating the effect of factors including physical as well as psychological passenger characteristics and routeing systematic on emergency evacuation process for public marine transportation. A detailed questionnaire has been conducted in this work to reflect passenger characteristics on simulation model in a more realistic manner. Also, a new routeing systematic is developed to provide an efficient evacuation procedure. As another contribution, a novel grid-based approach where the meshed discretized nodes can contain more than one passenger is proposed in simulation model for the first time. Then, a statistical analysis is included within the methodology to assess the importance level of each factor on evacuation time. The proposed methodology is applied to a real life Ro-Ro ferry. A validation protocol based on IMO regulations is conducted and confirmed the effectiveness of the suggested simulation model. The simulation of different scenario types have indicated the influencing factors in a ship emergency evacuation. According to results, passenger characteristics has been identified as the most dominant factor on evacuation performance. The highest evacuation time difference has been observed for different levels of weight attribute. Moreover, it is concluded that the consideration of load utilization balancing among evacuation systems for routeing decreases evacuation time significantly. Finally, significant evacuation time difference between grid approaches have been demonstrated. NOMENCLATURE [Symbol] [Definition] [(unit)] a ij Distance order between the j th MES and the i th hall AS Set of halls that are partially or completely assigned to an MES AUR Average load factor of the MES lm Passengers' ratio for factor l and category m w

In the complexity of deformed grid, the risk of disaster derived from its limitation. In this study, the Evacuation Route will be analyzed in the various scenarios of street obstruction. To define the best solution for evacuation planning, the result shown the reinvention of Religious spaces have potential to be used as evacuation place destination. The highest risk derives from obstruction of a vehicle and building rubble on street, problems of obstruction appear in form of congestion and evacuation place overcapacity which useful to risk reduction strategy.

In this paper, we present a short overview of the people flow coordination methods and propose a multi-agent based route recommender architecture for smart spaces which considers the influence of stress on human reactions to the recommended routes. The objective of the architecture is to ensure that people can efficiently move in and among smart spaces while at the same time improve the overall system performance. The functioning of the architecture is demonstrated on a case study. The proposed approach can be used, among others, in route recommendation in smart cities, large public events, and emergency evacuations.

"One of the hallmarks of so called “performance based fire safety design” is the use of complex mathematical models that purport to accurately predict human behavior in a wide variety of fire settings. These models are overwhelmingly created and used by engineers with little background or training in the limits of predicting human behavior . The target audience for these models is not behavioral scientists or the research community, but instead they are directed towards regulators with even less understanding of human behavior or the limits of modeling . While some developers may understand the limitations of behavioral models, overwhelmingly the current role of such models is to get “a number” that can be used to satisfy the regulatory authorities. This process is fraught with potential for error. For example a major proponent of behavioral models describes a key activity: To predict occupant responses and behaviors during a fire emergency, the occupant characteristics of a building's population should be reviewed to identify the nature of an occupant group or groups .

But buildings last a very long time. A knowledgeable reviewer would ask the question HOW does the author propose to do this for the lifetime of the building? What keeps the occupant characteristics within the range proposed by the engineer? In addition, what magic keeps the reactions of the occupants predictable in the future by the reactions of people with the current characteristics? Fire evacuation models are simply full of this type of guesswork, often masquerading as “engineering judgment”. But while engineering judgment is well calculated to interpolate data between known data points in the presence of an adequate covering law, it cannot be extended to extrapolating from mere observational data in the absence of a suitable covering law.
As a result there are two core problems in the use of behavioral science models in fire engineering:
1) Behavioral science is fundamentally more complex and uncertain than standard engineering
2) Forensic sciences lack the stabilizing feedback loop of real science.

It is well established that even in the physical environment so called “forensic sciences” often have weak theoretical bases, inadequate validation structures, and very poor fits for the environment in which they are used. This forensic approach, combined with the complexity of behavioral science and the very long feedback loop on building disasters can lead to the approval of structures that have massive inherent vulnerabilities. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate a small portion of the core issues in the use of behavioral models. We examine the assumptions routinely used in such models when compared to the reality of historic and cultural structures.
Historic and cultural structures involve complex variables that lack supporting data or that are difficult to be predict; they demonstrate the frontiers of the use of models and clearly illustrate the need to carefully examine and distinguish between what we know and what we don’t know. Evacuation models are some of the most complex programs used in fire engineering. They make often heroic assumption about the predictability of human behavior. They also contain hidden implicit assumptions about the physical evacuation environment."