Event-driven modeling of elevator assisted evacuation in ultra high-rise buildings

Authored by S M Lo, Juan Chen, Jian Ma

Date Published: 2017

DOI: 10.1016/j.simpat.2017.03.004

Sponsors: Chinese National Natural Science Foundation Key National Natural Science Foundation of China Research Grants Council of Hong Kong

Platforms: No platforms listed

Model Documentation: Other Narrative Flow charts Mathematical description

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

In the past few decades, numerous ultra high-rise buildings have been erected in the metropolitan areas of many cities around the world. For the related building designers, building occupants and the governments, fire safety problem is certainly a major concern, especially after the collapse of World Trade Center in the 9/11 event. That disaster makes people reconsider ultra high-rise building evacuation strategies. Of the current strategies, using elevators in ultra high-rise buildings to assist evacuation seems to be promising in improving evacuation efficiency. To quantitatively evaluate elevator assisted evacuation process, an event-driven agent-based modeling approach is proposed in the present paper. This modeling approach could capture not only the movement characteristics of stair using occupants but also the detailed elevator motion features. The combined effects of occupants' and elevators' parameters on the evacuation efficiency have been investigated. Results indicated that the model is helpful to reveal the dynamics of elevator assisted evacuation, and sometime, using elevators to move all occupants to ground safety point may not be an optimal solution. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Tags
Agent-based model Pedestrians Strategies Fire People Disabilities Escape Elevator evacuation model Stair evacuation model Ultra high-rise buildings Event-driven model Floor field