A study on evacuation time from lecture halls in Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia

Abstract

An evacuation situation in any building involves many risks. The geometry of building and high potential of occupant load may affect the efficiency of evacuation process. 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. The main objective of this project is to investigate the relationship between the movement time, travel speed and occupant density during a series of evacuation drills specifically for lecture halls. Generally, this study emphasizes on the movement of crowd within a limited space and includes the aspects of human behaviour. A series of trial evacuations were conducted in selected lecture halls at Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia with the aim of collecting actual data for numerical analysis. The numerical data obtained during trial evacuations were used to determine the evacuation time, crowd movement and behaviour during evacuation process particularly for lecture halls. The evacuation time and number of occupants exiting from each exit were recorded. Video camera was used to record and observe the movement behaviour of occupants during evacuations. EvacuatioNZ was used to simulate the trials evacuations of DK 5 and the results predicted were compared with experimental data. EvacuatioNZ was also used to predict the evacuation time and the flow of occupants exiting from each door for DK 4 and DK 8.