An Assessment Algorithm for Indoor Evacuation Model

Abstract

The public buildings increased significantly with the economy's growth and the population's advancement. The complexity of the indoor layout and the involvement of many people cause the indoor evacuation wayfinding to the nearest exit to be more challenging during emergencies such as fire. In order to overcome the problem, each building is compulsory to follow the standard evacuation preparedness required by Uniform Building By-Law (UBBL). Researchers have also developed evacuation models to help evacuees evacuate safely during the evacuation from a building. However, building owners do not know which evacuation model is suitable for implementing the chosen high-rise building. Two problems were identified in choosing a suitable evacuation model during the decision-making process. First, many developed evacuation models focus on studying different features of evacuation behavior and evacuation time. Second, the validation and comparison of the evacuation model is the missing process before applying the suitable evacuation model. Both validation and comparison procedures were made independently without any standard assessment that encapsulates the critical incident features during the indoor evacuation and virtual spatial elements. Therefore, this research proposed an indoor evacuation assessment algorithm to solve the problem. The assessment algorithm refers to the elements developed in our previous study. We determined attributes, executed simulations, and evaluated the cluster performance using the developed framework. The outcome can help the building owners assess which suitable existing evacuation model is the best to implement at the chosen building.