The modeling of how visibility ranges can affect the fire evacuation in modern buildings

Abstract

In the past research, wherever an occupant is in the compartment, he is always able to see the exit signs clearly and escape during emergency. This assumption is not realistic when the compartment concerned is filled with smoke. In order to simulate the group behavior of occupants, a rule termed “flow with the stream” is introduced in this final year project. Basically, this rule stipulates that the movement of an individual occupant will be limited byr low visibility conditions and guided by friends and family members who are in groups.

The proposed CA model takes account of human behavior, tenability analysis and average movement velocity. A simple experiment was conducted to find the average velocity of different age groups walking and running on flat ground. The experimental details are attached in Appendix A.

In the numerical example, the phenomenon of “flow with the stream” is simulated. The results indicate that the different visibility ranges can affect an evacuation process significantly. It shows that when the visibility range is better, it will result in a higher evacuation rate. It also shows that as the number of guides (those who are familiar with the location of exits) increases, the rate of evacuation is improved.

Currently, this CA model is used in emergency evacuation/fire safety assessments to draw comparisons between different designs of evacuation schemes. For future improvement, it is certain that real tests in a smoke-filled environment whereby visibility and evacuation velocity can be determined will allow the proposed CA model to realistically simulate evacuation process. Hence, collecting experimental data should be one of the most important future works.