Evacuation Processes of Different Genders in Different Visibility Conditions – An Experimental Study

Abstract

Practical data of human movement characteristics in different visibility conditions is necessary for the fire performance-based designs and evacuation calculation models. In this study, an evacuation experiment was conducted in a classroom and the evacuation processes were recorded by video cameras. The impacts of visibility and gender on walking speed were analyzed. The walking speed of young female pedestrians in good visibility conditions measured in our experiment is 0.92 m/s and in conditions without visibility the mean velocity is 0.42 m/s . Besides, the mean velocity of males in conditions with good visibility is 0.91 m/s and in zero visibility conditions the value is 0.69 m/s . Additionally, the distributions of velocities obtained in different visibility conditions in this study obey the Gaussian distribution. The results are similar to that of previous study. The research is helpful for devising evacuation schemes of theater, stadiums, gymnasiums etc. and also can be used in guiding regional evacuation processes, such as evacuation processes of chemical industrial parks whose building layouts and exit arrangements are similar to the classroom.