A Post-fire Survey on the Pre-evacuation Human Behavior

A delay in the pre-evacuation reaction may be one of the reasons causing occupants to be ‘trapped’ in a dangerous zone. Under fire situations, people are found to behave differently in that some may start evacuation immediately, some may ignore the fire alarms and engage in their activities and some others may participate in fighting the fire. These behavioral reaction patterns are influenced by some factors, such as occupant characteristics, building characteristics and fire characteristics. The purpose of this study is to investigate the pre-evacuation behavior of occupants under fire and explore the associations between these factors and the human behavior. To obtain the human behavioral information in real fire, a post-fire survey for a multi-storey office building fire in a major city in Mainland China was carried out with the assistance of local fire professionals. Some of the possible factors that might influence the occupants’ actions at recognitions and response stage were examined. It was reckoned that the behavioral reaction at recognition and response stage was mainly dependent on the human characteristics and building characteristics except the fire characteristics. The results also implied that pre-evacuation time was typically influenced by the occupant characteristics.     

Recent developments in pedestrian flow theory and research in Russia

Predtechenskii and Milinskii's seminal work [Predtechenskii VM, Milinskii AI. Planning for foot traffic flow in buildings. Revised and updated edition. Moscow: Stoiizdat; 1969] in relation to pedestrian flows is well known. However, analysis of the experimental results and observations obtained from this series of experimental studies revealed the inherent statistical non-homogeneity of pedestrian flow speeds [Kholshevnikov VV. The study of human flows and methodology of evacuation standardisation. Moscow: MIFS; 1999]. As such, the results of these individual experiments cannot be integrated to produce a valid general expression V=f(D) for each type of pedestrian flow path, where V is the flow velocity and D is the flow density. This paper presents further pedestrian flow research conducted in Russia post 1969.     

Assessing the Verification and Validation of Building Fire Evacuation Models

To date there is no International standard on the verification and validation (V&V) of building fire evacuation models, i.e., model testers adopt inconsistent procedures or tests designed for other model uses. For instance, the tests presented within the MSC/Circ.1238 Guidelines for evacuation analysis for new and existing passenger ships provided by the International Maritime Organization are often employed for the V&V of models outside their original context of use (building fires instead of maritime applications). This paper presents a list of verification tests for component testing and the analysis of emergent behaviours together with examples of experimental data-sets suitable for the analysis of different core components. The capabilities of building fire evacuation models are evaluated by studying their five main core components, namely (1) pre-evacuation time, (2) movement and navigation, (3) exit usage, (4) route availability and (5) flow constraints. This paper discusses the tests which are included in a freely available Technical Note developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This work is intended to open a discussion on the main issues associated with the definition of a standard procedure for the V&V of building fire evacuation models, including the definition of the acceptance criteria of a standard V&V protocol.     

Building safety and human behaviour in fire: A literature review

The most crucial aspect of a building's safety in the face of fire is the possibility of safe escape. An important precondition is that its fire safety facilities enable independent and adequate fire response performances by the building's occupants. In practice, it appears that the measures currently required by law do not always provide the support that people in burning buildings need. Consequently, understanding how individuals behave in the case of fire and fire evacuation is essential if we are to bring fire safety measures into line with occupants’ needs during an incident. This paper contains a review of the available literature on human behaviour in a fire so far as building safety is concerned. The findings are presented as an overview of the critical factors which determine occupants’ fire response performances, namely the characteristics of fire, human beings and buildings. The study highlights that some of the assumptions about the existing paradigm of fire safety in buildings are not consistent with the knowledge set out in the literature. The key observation is that psychonomics appear to have significant influence on occupants’ fire response performances. Accordingly, the traditional approach to fire safety will have to be supplemented by scientific knowledge from this field. Hence, there is a need for a new approach to fire safety design in buildings, which is set out herein.     

性能化防火设计中人员疏散问题安全性的一种评估方法

提出了一种在性能化防火设计中人员疏散问题安全性的评估方法，该方法是把火灾烟气运动规律、建筑物结构和人员疏散特点结合的研究成果，分别计算建筑物中不同单元内的火灾荷载阚值，在发生火灾时，烟气达到危险状态的时间和人员疏散所用的时间，比较这两个时间来确定建筑物防火设计是否达到性能化防火中人员安全疏散的要求。该方法从控制建筑物内火灾荷载的多少和建筑物的结构出发，在现行的计算软件的基础上．可用于实际的火灾安全工程设计和火灾安全咨询。     

基于FDS的半潜式生活平台火灾风险研究

以某海洋平台生活区为例构建火灾风险数学模型,利用FDS 火灾数值模拟软件分析烟气的蔓延规律、结合不同类型舱室可燃物种类以及人员应急撤离运动情况的量化分析,确定危险舱室具体位置。基于贝叶斯网络将危险舱室的火灾风险模型细化成包含舱室各种特性的函数。     

Developing a database for emergency evacuation model

Performance-based design (PBD) has been playing an important function in fire safety of buildings, and how to accurately simulate occupants’ behavior gains attention from fire engineers. With booming development of evacuation software, developing an extensive database for evacuation models is imperative and urgent. According to the literature, the whole process of evacuation includes several stages, such as pre-movement, action period, walking period, etc. In order to develop an evacuation model, data in these stages concerning pre-movement time, walking speed, occupant characteristics, actions and exit choice decisions are compiled in this paper. These data can be used as input parameters for evacuation models in PBD or in validating the evacuation models’ accuracy.     

安全疏散性能化消防设计初探

对现行建筑有关防火规范要求进行分析，立足于保证人员安全，克服和解决当前执行中存在的问题。从建筑防火的基本原则出发，以探讨的方式提出性能化疏散设计的数学模型，并将有关建筑消防安全的各方面影响定义成该模型的函数，将建筑安全疏散设计的安全性评价从定性评价转化为定量评价。     

A Multi-Grid Model for Evacuation Coupling with the Effects of Fire Products

In the study, influences of fire products on pedestrians are introduced into a multi-grid evacuation model, in which the space is discretized into small grids with the size of 0.1 m × 0.1 m and each pedestrian occupies 5 × 5 grid sites. The fire products affect two walking parameters of pedestrians: the desired movement direction and the step frequency. The data of fire products are obtained from the simulation results of the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), a well-founded computational fluid dynamic (CFD) program, developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). With this model, we investigated the routes of pedestrians in fires, and the evacuation times in scenarios with different fire intensities, pre-movement times or door widths. The results indicate that pedestrians will avoid moving towards the fire source, small fire may make egress process faster while large fire may reduce evacuation efficiency significantly, the movement time increases rapidly with the increasing pre-movement time, and the door width plays a more important role for evacuation in fire than normal condition. Furthermore, for the evacuation from a hall with two exits our model can reproduce the inefficient use of exits and predict the optimal condition that results in least evacuation time.     

Research on smoke control in underground structures

The purpose of the research described in this paper is to test smoke movement, to study the efficiency of smoke control by air control around the fire origin, and to determine control methods to protect evacuation zones from smoke. The four steps required to accomplish these aims are: (1) construction of mathematical models that describe the horizontal movement of smoke, the propagation velocity and heat loss of smoke; (2) a comparison between the mathematical models and full-size and scale models of an underground corridor; (3) a comparison between different ventilation systems and positions of fire origin in a scale model of an underground structure; and (4) simulation of the smoke movement of the underground structure using a one-layer zone model. A simulation model for evaluating the safety of underground structures is also proposed.     

建筑火灾中人员疏散响应过程推理与评估模型研究

为了预防建筑火灾发生和减少火灾中人员的伤亡,利用消防大数据分析技术和贝叶斯网络分析方法,研究了建筑火灾发展过程及人员疏散响应过程的推理与动态评估方法。通过对建筑消防设施响应状态和火灾中人员心理和行为特征的分析,探讨了火灾阶段划分方法和人员疏散行为的分类,提出了火灾中人员伤亡的轨迹交叉理论,进而构建了基于贝叶斯网络的建筑火灾动态风险和人员疏散安全评估框架。分别探讨了建筑火灾发展、人员疏散响应等2 条研究主线的推理过程,探讨了疏散条件评估过程。研究表明,该模型可通过对建筑特征、消防设施状态信息以及人员响应信息等消防大数据进行融合,实现火灾中人员疏散响应过程推理与动态风险评估,从而提高建筑消防安全管理水平     

基于改进蚁群算法和物联网的消防疏散系统设计

针对大型公共建筑结构复杂、消防疏散困难等问题,以改进蚁群算法为基础构建动态火灾疏散模型,分析火灾 3 个不同阶段并获取最优动态消防疏散路径,并通过数值模拟与其他算法对比,验证有效性;结合物联网技术以 Android 平台为载体设计消防疏散系统移动终端,实时引导用户撤离建筑物并迅速到达安全出口。实验结果表明：所设计的大型公共建筑消防疏散系统能够快速、准确地寻找到最优疏散路径,提高消防疏散效率。     

A Global Model for Heat Release Rate Prediction of Cable Burning on Vertical Cable Tray in Different Fire Scenarios

Fire Technology - Cable fire risk analysis is important for fire protection design in  industrial as well as residential buildings. The vertical movement of the cable...     

Public Perceptions of High-rise Building Emergency Evacuation Preparedness

In light of the events of September 11, 2001, a concern in the fire safety community is that the public attitudes toward emergency evacuation procedures and preparedness may have changed and that current assumptions about occupant behavior may no longer be valid. In 2006, a survey of high-rise building occupants was conducted to explore their knowledge of high-rise building safety and emergency evacuation procedures and their attitudes and perceptions about high-rise safety and emergency evacuation procedures. Some 244 residential building occupants in Chicago, New York City and San Francisco and 228 commercial building occupants in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, and Philadelphia were surveyed. The study revealed that the events of September 11, 2001 have heightened occupants concerns about safety in high-rise buildings. Eight in ten commercial building respondents participated in a fire drill in the last year, compared to 18% of residential building respondents. Among both survey respondents, the most frequent top-of-mind suggestion to building management to improve safety was “more fire drills.” Almost all occupants know where the fire exits are. And, keeping with conventional wisdom, most occupants believe using elevators is unsafe during a fire, however, 28% also believe that going to the roof is a possible alternative to using the stairs. These findings support the need for continued public education about emergency evacuations procedures in high-rise buildings.

An Experimental Study of Smoke Movement in Multi-Storey Buildings

This paper presents the results of an experimental study of smoke movement in a 10-storey building. Eight full-scale experiments including four real fuel fires and four propane fires were conducted in the National Research Council Canada (NRCC)’s 10-storey experimental tower to generate smoke movement data that can be used for the validation of computer models. The heat release rate (HRR) of fire cannot be measured in this tower, so to estimate the HRR of fuel-package fires in this study, an approach using propane as a fuel was developed to reproduce the temperature distribution of various fuel-package tests.     

Designing escape routes in buildings

This paper discusses a design method for calculating pedestrian movement developed by Predtechenskii and Milinski and provides an egress model based upon this work for the evacuation of multistory buildings via staircases with regard to real evacuation tests in high rise office buildings. Furthermore, it briefly compares its predictions with regulatory requirements on means of escape. Reference: Ezel Kendik, Designing Escape Routes in Buildings,Fire Technology, Vol. 22, November 1986, p. 272.     

含吹拔空间的高层建筑火灾烟气流动数值模拟

研究设有吹拔空间的高层建筑烟气流动及火灾蔓延特征,分析其对防火分区和安全疏散的影响。采用性能化消防设计的方法对某设有74.65 m、55.95 m双吹拔空间的一类高层建筑建立火灾发展模型、设计火灾场景、用CFD火灾模拟软件进行数值模拟。结果表明该建筑利用吹拔空间自然排烟时各火灾场景均能满足各层人员疏散的性能指标,在吹拔空间四周环廊上设置挡烟垂壁影响烟气的顺畅排出,缩短了危险来临时间,增大了火灾的危害性。提出吹拔空间式建筑宜利用烟囱效应优先采用自然排烟方式,烟气控制宜疏堵结合,以疏导为主的设计理念。     

基于时间着色Petri网的建筑火灾疏散系统建模与仿真

为缓解建筑火灾疏散时间长且效率低问题,基于时间着色Petri网的理论,针对某建筑的结构特点进行建模并进行性能分析。通过算法计算与分析,合理规划不同类型人员的不同疏散通道选择,并对模型进行时间模拟仿真,提高建筑内人员疏散效率。提出带有建筑火灾疏散因素的管理疏散方法,增加相关的颜色集和时间戳,并在原模型中融入算法计算,模拟火灾疏散时间,并提出不同类别人员疏散引导的方案。达到疏散用时更短、效率更高、伤亡率更低的目标。实验结果表明,相比于其他模型,融入管理疏散算法的时间着色Petri网模型,人员平均疏散时间降低6.9 s,具有较高疏散效率。     

某机场扩建航站楼消防设计

以某机场扩建航站楼为实例,对大体量、大空间、大面积、长疏散距离、人员多且分布和特征不确定的特殊性的航站楼进行分析,分析评价其设计火灾场景,对烟气运动规律和人员疏散进行模拟研究.结果表明,该航站楼所确定的消防设计可以保证建筑的消防安全.