Building Emergency Evacuation Research Articles

Research on Application of Improved Quantum Optimization Algorithm in Path Planning

For the building emergency evacuation path planning problem, existing algorithms suffer from low convergence efficiency and the problem of getting trapped in local optima. The Bloch Spherical Quantum Genetic Algorithm (BQGA) based on the least-squares principle for single-robot path planning and Bloch Spherical Quantum Bee Colony Algorithm (QABC) for multi-robots path planning are studied. Firstly, the characteristics of three-dimensional path planning are analyzed, and a linear decreasing inertia weighting approach is used to balance the global search ability of chromosomes and accelerate the search performance of the algorithm. Then, the application algorithm can generate a clear motion trajectory in the raster map. Thirdly, the least squares approach is used to fit the results, thus obtaining a progressive path. Finally, multi-robots path planning approaches based on QABC are discussed, respectively. The experimental results show that BQGA and QABC do not need to have a priori knowledge of the map, and they have strong reliability and practicality and can effectively avoid local optimum. In terms of convergence speed, BQGA improved by 3.39% and 2.41%, respectively, while QABC improved by 13.31% and 17.87%, respectively. They are more effective in sparse paths.

Optimizing safe evacuation using pathfinder: emergency strategies in high-rise and super high-rise complex buildings in the new administrative capital

ABSTRACT Recently, the Egyptian government has sought to create new urban spots. The New Administrative Capital was one of those new urban extensions. Architects and urban designers tended to vertical expansion in planning this city as a result of the high cost of the land. Accordingly, high-rise and super-high-rise buildings have been relied upon in the architectural design of the buildings. This study aims to evaluate the achievement of safe occupants’ evacuation in case of fire for two high-rise and one super high-rise complex buildings based on a set of variables. Staircase design, the use of elevators, and the provision of refuge areas were evaluated, through simulating seven scenarios using Pathfinder software. The simulation results comprised an assessment of average stairs traffic jams, the occupant load density on emergency stairs, and the required safe evacuation time (RSET) for each scenario. It was concluded from the study that staircase design has a significant impact on (RSET) time. As well as, evacuation using elevators or relaying on refuge areas as auxiliary means with the emergency stairs may be safer for these types of buildings. Finally, the study provided technical requirements for using refuge areas and elevators in emergency evacuation in high-rise and super high-rise buildings.

Modeling of emergency evacuation in high rise buildings considering congestion at stairs based on Markov chains

High-rise buildings are vulnerable to encountering fires or other emergencies at any time, requiring an immediate evacuation of occupants. In the context of building evacuations, various engineering parameters are often utilized to evaluate the time required for people to reach a safe place when descending a staircase. A discrete-time Markov chain model is proposed to evaluate the evacuation time of the occupants in such circumstances by taking into consideration factors like merging at the stairs and congestion on the floor. Based on the congestion probabilities with respect to the number of evacuees in the building and other human behavior factors that slow down the rate of evacuation, non-congested and congested scenarios are evaluated. The effect of the critical parameters that influenced the evacuation process in the high-rise building, such as walking speed, number of evacuees, and effective stair width, is evaluated in both scenarios. The findings indicate an optimal evacuation speed of 0.7–1.4 m/s. The effective width of the stair is suggested to be between 1.6 and 2.4 m using the model. The simulation results are in good accordance with the SFPE method, the NIST egress simulator, and the agent-based model results.

A new integrated agent-based framework for designing building emergency evacuation: A BIM approach

Today, safety control is considered one of the most important pillars of building construction processes due to maintaining security in major incidents such as fire, earthquake, and flood, and placing a basis of mutual trust between builders and residents for building design and construction. The evacuation process is a key aspect of safety control in case of an emergency such as a fire. This study develops a new integrated agent-based framework for designing building emergency evacuation by using Building Information Model (BIM). Three main steps of the framework include data collection, building model development, and evacuation simulation with a combination of Revit-MassMotion. The methodology is demonstrated through its application to a real case of a multi-story commercial building located in Iran. The building model is simulated through three scenarios with a different number of floors (i.e., one, two, and three floors). In each scenario, the safety of evacuation is evaluated for three designs of stairs in the building. The results show the best performance of the building evacuation in all scenarios can be achieved when two individual stairs are designed for each floor. Other influential factors including the maximum density, vision time, and agent count are more acceptable compared to other design factors. These parameters can also be used to design a control system by using smart conceptual models based on both decision tree and auto-work break structure methods.

Dynamic risk assessment of emergency evacuation in large public buildings: A case study

Large-scale public buildings are characterized by huge internal space, a large number of people, long evacuation paths, along with many internal risk factors and uncertain or unpredictable emergency events. If the condition of risk factors in large buildings could be monitored in real-time, to achieve dynamic assessment and prediction of personnel evacuation risk factors, it can provide early warning, give auxiliary support for emergency decision-making, and improve the risk management and control capability of large public buildings. For the importance of improving risk prediction and evaluation capability in practice, this paper proposes a dynamic risk assessment method that integrates dynamic object detection and risk assessment base on DNN (Deep Neural Network). A real-time detection method based on YOLO (You Only Look Once) algorithm is proposed to extract the risk factors about human factors, which have very important influence in the evacuation processes. Combining building structural features with these dynamic human factors as the input parameters, DNN is finally used as the risk assessment model and to realize the real-time evaluation of evacuation risk level.

A human-centered design approach: design a new evacuation alarm system for building fire emergency considering the influence of pre-emergency activity

This study combined the Human-centered design (HCD) approach with the immersive VR techniques to design and evaluate a new evacuation alarm system with improved warning efficiency for building emergency evacuation, considering the negative influence of pre-emergency activity. Four main HCD design activities were performed, the context-of-use, user requirements were defined through a theoretical perspective, technology-based solution research, expert group meeting, and focus group were used to produce the final concept. A smart phone-based evacuation alarm system concept, consisting of a control center and a smartphone-based user interface, featuring warning redundancy and multimodality was proposed. A developed virtual environment (VE) was used to evaluate and refine the final design in an iteration manner. This study widened the application of the HCD approach by using alternative simulator methods for evaluation, and added a step for the validation of VR as an adequate tool for designing and evaluating products.

Construction of the Simulation Algorithm for Evacuation of Commercial Complexes under the Panic Factor

In order to study the behavior and characteristics of crowd evacuation in buildings, and then organize crowd evacuation reasonably and efficiently in emergency, a simulation model of crowd evacuation in buildings is proposed, which not only accords with reality, but also comprehensively considers many factors. Aiming at the shortcomings of the crowd evacuation simulation model in the existing building emergency evacuation, this model provides a multi-agent evacuation simulation method and system based on panic emotion, which aims to more truly simulate the crowd evacuation process in emergency, and has important practical significance for the crowd evacuation plan in emergency and how to effectively organize crowd evacuation and reduce casualties in emergencies. In order to achieve the above goal, a multi-agent evacuation simulation method based on leaders and panic emotions is proposed. The method includes the following three stages: perception stage, decision-making stage and action stage, and each stage is explained step by step.

Optimal solutions to vertical access placement design in residential high-rise buildings based on human behavior

Human behavior at the time of building crisis should be analyzed in order to design buildings with satisfactory performance. In residential high-rise buildings, there are certain complications due to residential conditions. Given the high population density of these buildings, it is important to analyze their vertical access performance for emergency evacuations. This study aims to find the optimal placement and layout of vertical access in residential high-rise buildings. It asks: What is the most optimal solution to vertical access placement design in residential high-rise buildings? To answer this, human behavior simulation models during an emergency evacuation in residential high-rise buildings were first analyzed, and the best model was selected. Based on the human behavior models, the vertical access placement was then optimized to evaluate the optimal structures of four types of 60-story residential buildings designed and compared in SFPE and Steering simulation engines. The scenarios differ in vertical access placement. The simulations are conducted in four parts, which include how people placement on each floor, considering disabled persons along with assisted evacuation, and the fire-involved stories and the blocked stairs. According to the research results, a cost-effective core that solves structural problems and provides vertical access will not necessarily be the right solution to the emergency evacuation of high-rise buildings. Instead, placing vertical access features such as stairs and elevators on two opposite sides of a building plan can reduce the total evacuation time by 20%.

In whose best interests? Regulating childcare environments in Australia

This conceptual model paper uses systems theory to explain how key elements in the Australian policy and regulatory context lead to three issues of concern in childcare centre physical environments: siting of centres on busy roads; lack of outdoor space; and, emergency evacuation in high-rise buildings. Drawing on evidence from prior studies and policy documents through desktop research, as well as childcare centre visits and communications with stakeholders and experts, we confirmed these issues as threats to children’s health, safety, development and well-being. Adapting Goekler’s ‘iceberg model’ of systems theory, we identified a dominance of commercial childcare property interests and complex and conflicting policy and regulatory structures, as explanatory elements leading to outcomes that conflict with children’s best interests.

Follow people or signs? A novel way-finding method based on experiments and simulation

Evacuation signs are important for emergency evacuation in complex buildings. The interaction between evacuees and evacuation signs attracted much attention. However, current research mainly considers the visibility of signs and depends on inaccurate video analysis and subjective after-drill questionnaires, and the impact of surrounding people is ignored. This paper utilized an eye-tracking device to collect the sign detection data objectively and concentrated on the following behavior with surrounding people. Based on the results of a series of experiments, it is found that not all pedestrians detect the signs due to objective and subjective ignorance. Even the sign is detected, there exist some evacuees who decide to follow other pedestrians rather than sign guidance. Consequently, a new interaction logic and a new wayfinding method are applied in an evacuation model. The simulation results show the significant difference between the two logics in this paper. It describes that the original logic overestimates the sign guidance effect and underestimates the evacuation time strongly. The new logic can be applied in the building’s design and security evaluation to enhance evacuation safety.

Follow the evacuation signs or surrounding people during building evacuation, an experimental study

Evacuation signage plays a vital role in building evacuation. In order to test the efficiency of evacuation signage, the traditional methods are video analysis and after-drill questionnaires and the human factors are rarely considered. This paper investigates the impact of surrounding pedestrians on the sign guidance efficiency during building emergency evacuation, replacing the traditional ways with eye tracking device method. More than 500 participants were involved in the series of experiments to test the influence of surrounding people on detecting and following signages. It is found that (a) the subjective ignorance and objective ignorance of signs exist obviously and are affected by surrounding people number; (b) strangers and acquaintances have similar effect on the sign detection probability and direction choosing probability in the safe and quick evacuation experiments, contrary to general belief; (c) One surrounding person has an important influence on the sign guidance effect, especially on the following probability, while three surrounding people not. Based on the results of the experiments, a new logic of wayfinding within rooms was put forward and simulated to compared with the original logic. It is shown that the average right direction choosing percentage decreases by 30% after considering the effect of surrounding pedestrians, proving that the impact of surrounding pedestrians must be considered in evacuation modeling and evacuation route design.

Path intelligent optimization for dense crowd emergency evacuation in heritage buildings

There is a class of heritage buildings, such as museums, palaces and castles, which are closed buildings with multiple layers and exits. There are a lot of precious heritage and cultural relics in heritage buildings, and a large number of tourists need to be received every day. When suffering from emergencies such as fires, heritage buildings will be confronted with serious consequences if individuals cannot evacuate in time. In this paper, the path intelligent optimization for dense crowd emergency evacuation is proposed in heritage buildings. Firstly, based on Artificial Fish Swarm Algorithm (AFSA), agglomeration model is used when there is no guidance of guide personnel. Secondly, single-layer evacuation model is used to classify individuals into different categories based on improved K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) algorithm. The model can help individuals choose the nearest stair and save escape time. Thirdly, based on Dijkstra shortest path algorithm, multi-layer evacuation model is used to find the shortest distance and the optimal path for individuals to reach the exit. These models are applied to the Louvre in order to verify the rationality by calculating the approximate evacuation time. In case of emergency, the algorithm proposed in this paper can be modified according to the actual heritage buildings.

Egress Parameters Influencing Emergency Evacuation in High-Rise Buildings

Fire in buildings pose a significant threat to occupants, first responders as well as the structural system. Rapid spread of fire and smoke in buildings can hinder the process of evacuation resulting in loss of human life. Such situations call for a reliable egress system that provides safe evacuation of occupants in minimal time. Updating the occupants and first responders with much-needed situational awareness such as accessible stairwells and exits during the disaster can not only lead to efficient evacuation but also shorten the duration of evacuation in some scenarios. This paper examines occupant evacuation scenarios in fire exposed high-rise buildings. A parametric study is carried out on evacuation strategies in a 32-story typical office building during different fire exposure scenarios. The movement of occupants with and without situational awareness is simulated. The effect of critical parameters such as number of stories, width of the egress paths, location and number of exits on the evacuation process is evaluated. The time required for occupants to evacuate the building is estimated under normal conditions (to simulate fire evacuation drill) and under realistic fire exposure. Results from the study indicate that the two most significant factors that influence evacuation time are the location of stairway within the building and the floors at which fire starts. When fire starts at the lower levels of the building, the evacuation time is the highest. More importantly, if situational awareness is incorporated in emergency evacuation procedure, it can improve the evacuation efficiency in a fire exposed high-rise building; wherein up to 24% reduction in evacuation time is achieved.

Do people follow the crowd in building emergency evacuation? A cross-cultural immersive virtual reality-based study

This study aimed to examine the influence of crowd flow on human evacuation behavior during building fire emergencies, when evacuees perceive high uncertainty in the environment and experience mental stress. Evacuation experiments were conducted in an immersive virtual metro station, in which each participant was presented with one of three different patterns of crowd flow and asked to complete an evacuation task. The patterns of crowd flow were represented by non-player characters that split differently at each wayfinding decision point in the metro station. The experiments were conducted in Beijing, Los Angeles and London. The results showed that uneven splits of crowd flow motivated participants under mental stress to follow the majority of the crowd. This influence of crowd flow was generally consistent over the course of evacuation, and such consistency could be reinforced by stronger directional information conveyed by the crowd flow as well as positive feedback from the outcomes of previous wayfinding decisions. The results also indicated that the influence of crowd flow was significant in all three cultures represented by the three cities, however, the impact of culture on how participants would respond to the directional information conveyed by the crowd flow was insignificant.

大型建筑紧急疏散的动态优化模型及应用

大型建筑紧急疏散的动态优化模型及应用

Evaluation of emergency evacuation in school buildings_ Protocol for a Systematic Review

Children are amongst the most vulnerable affected groups by natural and human-made disasters. Disaster preparedness education programs have been developed to help reduce risk and increase resilience for hazardous events. A better understanding is needed about children evacuation behaviour in schools and the time of evacuation. Therefore, a systematic review is proposed to search for relevant information about emergency evacuation response in schools. This systematic review protocol was developed to present adequate guidelines that can provide relevant research results to fulfil the sought objective. Sixteen databases will be accessed (Scopus, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect, are some examples) and a total of three keyword expressions will be used. The selection process will be thoroughly described, including detailed data treatment and used eligibility criteria, to contribute to the general research on this field.

Ex-ante online risk assessment for building emergency evacuation through multimedia data.

Ex-ante online risk assessment for building emergency evacuation is essential to protect human life and property. Current risk assessment methods are limited by the tradeoff between accuracy and efficiency. In this paper, we propose an online method that overcomes this tradeoff based on multimedia data (e.g. videos data from surveillance cameras) and deep learning. The method consists of two parts. The first estimates the evacuee position as input for training the assessment model to then perform risk assessment in real scenarios. The second considers a social force model based on the evacuation simulation for the output of training model. We verify the proposed method in simulation and real scenarios. Model sensitivity analyses and large-scale tests demonstrate the usability and superiority of the proposed method. By the method, the computation time of risk assessment could be decreased from 10 minutes (by traditional simulation method) to 2.18 s.

Modelling building emergency evacuation plans considering the dynamic behaviour of pedestrians using agent-based simulation

Many people die every year in emergency situations due to the absence of efficient evacuation plans. Not having an adequate action plan implies high evacuation times that can put lives at risk. Usually, people do not follow the safety signs during unsafe conditions; they react unexpectedly due to the panic and the anxiety to quickly evacuate the place. The evacuation plans commonly indicate a specific exit route and do not consider the possibility of proposing alternative routes in case of blockages or high congestion. This research aims to design an evacuation plan considering aspects of pedestrian behaviour and multiple routing strategies. A combined agent-based discrete choice modelling approach was chosen to represent the heterogeneity in people’s behaviour and the interaction between them and the environment. The proposed evacuation plan incorporates specific signalling to encourage people taking alternatives routes when given paths are congested. The new plan also highlights the necessity to create new emergency exits and to modify the current structure of the building.

Bluetooth portal‐based system to measure the performance of building emergency evacuation plans and drills

The safety of a building can be explicated in two different ways: the ability to withstand a critical event that affects the structure and the ability to safely allow people to leave the building. This article present a new methodology that can allow engineers to detect people trajectories in evacuation drills and provide a measure of effectiveness for buildings evacuation plans. In the proposed system Bluetooth beacon passive emitters are positioned as reference points and the sensing device is made up by the smartphones of people evacuating a building. The proposed methodology is thus based on using beacons that are capable of emitting a radio signal. The radio signal can be picked up by the sensors present in smartphones. The signal is then processed by a dedicated application on the device. Information is transferred to a computer and elaborated obtaining a measure of people positions. In the system people movements in emergency evacuation drills can practically be traced with very simple and affordable equipment. Once all data from mobile phones are gathered the system is able to reconstruct the trajectories of smartphones, in indoor (or outdoor) environments, and therefore to assess the overall performance of the building evacuation plan.

Emergency evacuation in historic buildings and human behavior: a literature review

Emergency evacuation in historic buildings and human behavior: a literature review