Building information modelling for fire evacuation in high-rise residential buildings

Abstract

As the possibility of safe escape is the most crucial aspect of a building’s fire safety features, understanding human behaviour under fire conditions is important for successful evacuation. Although most of today’s buildings are equipped with adequate fire safety systems, a fire can still occur at anytime and anywhere in the building. In the last decade, researchers and practitioners have used information technology to assist with fire safety design and emergency management. One of these technologies is Building Information Modelling (BIM), which has been increasingly adopted as a process backed by computer-based tools for fire safety designs, simulations, and analyses. Although much research has been conducted on human behaviour during fire emergencies and the implementation of BIM for fire safety, there is a lack of research specifically on how information from a BIM model supported by sensors and smart phone technology can be delivered to occupants of high-rise residential buildings to aid the effectiveness of evacuation. The customisation of egress information delivery to individual occupants during a fire emergency is still at its premature phase, as highlighted by the gap identified from the literature review. A mixed method research approach was chosen that combined secondary and tertiary data from the literature review, preliminary discussions with firefighters and building occupants, in-depth interviews, simulation modelling, as well as a focus group for validation. [Continues.]