Study on the optimization for emergency evacuation scheme under fire in university building complex

Abstract

The evacuation in the university building complex involving a variety of campus buildings and a high density of occupants is barely simulated, especially by considering the safety awareness of evacuees and the impact of measured stair evacuation speed. This paper simulates and optimizes the fire emergency evacuation scheme of a university building complex in Northwest China by using BIM technology and Pathfinder simulation evacuation software. The proposed evacuation optimization scheme of university building complex reduces the evacuation time by 15–20% compared with the original evacuation scheme of the university. Through the simulation, it is found that the evacuation time required for sleeping at night is the shortest, while the longest evacuation time is required during lunch, due to the dispersion of students. Therefore, in addition to considering the safety awareness of the evacuees and the measured evacuation speed of stairs, the corresponding campus evacuation plan should be formulated according to the distribution of buildings in the campus complex and the actual utilization in different periods, so as to avoid the safety exit congestion and being far away from the refuge, due to the dense population in a specific period of time. This study also provides a method for solving the problem of regional evacuation path planning.