Investigation and Simulation on Human Evacuation Behaviour in Large Hospital Building in Shenyang

Abstract

As a typical crowded public place, fatal deaths are caused by ineffective evacuation action in large hospital on account of the special characteristics of occupants in hospital building, i.e., pathological, physiological and psychological behaviour, etc. Large amount of observation by camera and videos, as well as questionnaires were carried out in a SJ Hospital, which is the one of biggest hospitals in Shenyang. Based on that, correlation analysis was carried out between special behavioural characteristics of occupants in hospital and pedestrian walk velocity, as well as the correlation with their evacuation decision behaviour. Furthermore, evacuation simulation in the hospital building was done on the base of the fire dynamics simulation software FDS+Evac developed by NIST, USA. The investigation results illustrate that occupant walks slowly in hospital buildings at a ratio of 70%∼90% comparing with the healthy people in common public buildings. Occupants in hospital building tend to ask help to staffs of the hospital in wayfinding in the case of emergent situations. More than 1/3rd of the occupants are more likely inclined to lose their idea once emergent situation occurs. The evacuation simulation illustrates that egress width and efficient evacuation instructions are the most important strategies in the efficient evacuation in hospital buildings.