Bottlenecks in Evacuation Design Considering Both Structural and Human Behavioural Aspects: An Experimental Study

Abstract

Evacuation experiments were performed in February and in March 2012 in Finland. The first set of experiments was done at Aalto University, where 83 university students were used as test persons in a setup where counter flows in corridor was examined. The second and third sets of experiments were conducted in Kuopio, where the persons attending the tests were students of Finnish emergency services college and conscripts, in total 60 persons. These later tests included a geometry related to stairs, where fatigue, fire fighters’ and normal people counter flows, and fire fighters’ rescue operations in stairs are examined. Trials were also performed using different door geometries. Two other scenarios were conducted in corridors, where density of smoke, different lightning conditions, and counter flows are examined on both group and individual levels. The preliminary results of the test series without throughout statistical analysis are presented in this paper.