Integrated agent-based simulation and multi-criteria decision making approach for buildings evacuation evaluation

Abstract

It is of utmost importance to assess the level of safety provided by the building structure to its occupants in normal conditions and more importantly in fire incidents. Qualitative indicators tend to dominate the evaluation systems for building evacuation which means that these are limited to experts and key decision makers to evaluate them and this is not practical. Thus, new quantitative and objective evaluation criteria are necessary to accurately reflect the evacuation situation. Therefore, there is a need to develop a method that is both quantitative and qualitative to assess the evacuation performance of buildings. This research provides support to the implementation of buildings evacuation performance evaluation, with the aim of maximizing the occupants’ safety and deciding between multiple safe design alternatives. The objective of this study is to develop a multi-criteria ranking framework that integrates 3D modelling with Agent-Based Simulation (ABS) and Decision Support Tools. This will lead to quantitatively rate the overall evacuation performance of code compliant buildings, taking into consideration the many factors and criteria affecting the process. The proposed framework can be used by insurance companies to rank the different buildings that need insurance especially in case of limited funds and many acceptable options available. It can also be utilized by designers to evaluate the various design alternatives in order to select the optimum one or evaluate the performance of current evacuation plans in use. A case study was conducted to delineate the proposed framework features and its results were thoroughly analysed. Sensitivity analysis was also carried out to determine the most sensitive criteria used for the decision-making process.