Real time, real fire, real response: An analysis of response behaviour in housing for vulnerable people

This paper analyses response behaviour during an evacuation caused by a fire that occurred late on a Friday night in a three storey building housing socially vulnerable people. One escape corridor became smoke logged. Twenty people were observed on CCTV during the evacuation with one person choosing to enter the smoke filled corridor to alert a friend. No-one was injured by the fire or during the evacuation. The paper considers response behaviour, travel speed and exit selection based on analysis of CCTV from inside the building. Behaviour exhibited by the residents was similar to that expected within a domestic dwelling rather than a hotel and average walk speeds were found to be larger than those normally used in engineering analysis

Modelling evacuation using escalators: a London Underground dataset

This paper presents a brief analysis of an escalator human factors dataset collected in a London Underground (subway) station in England. The data analysis highlights and quantifies a variety of escalator human factors. Using the buildingEXODUS evacuation software, a series of evacuation scenarios of a hypothetical underground station are then presented. The simulation results demonstrate that escalator strategies and associated human factors can have a considerably influence upon an evacuation compared to using stairs alone

Investigating the impact of exit availability on egress time using computer based evacuation simulation

This paper examines the influence of exit availability on evacuation time for a narrow body aircraft under certification trial conditions using computer simulation. A narrow body aircraft which has previously passed the certification trial is used as the test configuration. While maintaining the certification requirement of 50% of the available exits, six different exit configurations are examined. These include the standard certification configuration (one exit from each exit pair) and five other exit configurations based on commonly occurring exit combinations found in accidents. These configurations are based on data derived from the AASK database and the evacuation simulations are performed using the airEXODUS evacuation simulation software. The results show that the certification practice of using half the available exits predominately down one side of the aircraft is neither statistically relevant nor challenging. For the aircraft cabin layout examined, the exit configuration used in certification trial produces the shortest egress times. Furthermore, three of the six exit combinations investigated result in predicted egress times in excess of 90 seconds, suggesting that the aircraft would not satisfy the certification requirement under these conditions

A computational study of the characteristics of aircraft post-crash fires

Full-scale furnished cabin fires have been studied experimentally for the purpose of characterising the post-crash cabin fire environment by the US Federal Aviation Administration for many years. In this paper the Computational Fluid Dynamics fire field model SMARTFIRE is used to simulate one of these fires conducted in the C-133 test facility in order to provide further validation of the computational approach and the SMARTFIRE software. The experiment involves exposing the interior cabin materials to an external fuel fire, opening only one exit at the far end of the cabin (the same side as the rupture) for ventilation, and noting the subsequent spread of the external fire to the cabin interior and the onset of flashover at approximately 210 seconds. Through this analysis, the software is shown to be in good agreement with the experimental data, producing reasonable agreement with the fire dynamics prior to flashover and producing a reasonable prediction of the flashover time i.e. 225 seconds. The paper then proceeds to utilize the model to examine the impact on flashover time of the extent of cabin furnishings and cabin ventilation provided by available exit

Wayfinding behavior within buildings - An international survey

A building wayfinding questionnaire study is presented which analyses the importance of a set of wayfinding criteria from a building evacuation perspective. The main path selection criteria tested in this questionnaire are handedness and length of the first leg of the path. The study involved 1166 participants from 36 countries. The results suggest that the handedness, a genetic factor, and the side of the road people drive on, a cultural factor, exert a significant influence on path choice. The results of this study clarify misconceptions existing in urban wayfinding studies regarding the importance of the length of the first leg of a path. Path selection criteria along with their relative rankings are suggested for inclusion in wayfinding algorithms used within evacuation models. It is further suggested that these rankings may be country specific

Experimental and survey studies on the effectiveness of dynamic signage systems

Signage systems are widely used in the built environment to aid occupant wayfinding during both circulation and evacuation. Recent research conducted by the authors shows that only 38% of people ‘see’ conventional static emergency signage in presumed emergency situations in an unfamiliar built environment, even if the sign is located directly in front of them and their vision is unobstructed. However, most people who see the sign follow the sign. These results suggest that current emergency guidance signs are less effective as an aid to wayfinding than they potentially can be and that signs are likely to become more effective if their detectability can be improved while upholding the comprehensibility of the guidance information they provide. A novel dynamic signage design is proposed to address this issue. The effectiveness of the new sign is tested under almost identical experimental settings and conditions as in the previous experiments examining conventional, static signs. The results show that 77% of people ‘see’ the dynamic sign and 100% of them go on to follow the sign. In addition, a dynamic method to identify that an exit route is no longer viable is tested using an international survey to gauge understanding of the new signage concept. Survey results suggest that the purpose of the new sign can be clearly understood by over 90% of the sample

Grouping strategies for MPS soot transport model and its application in large-scale enclosure fires

A soot transport model called Multi-Particle-Size model (MPS model) was developed to improve the prediction of soot movement by considering the uneven mass size distribution of soot particles and the influence of particle size on the gravitational settling. The model requires a sophisticated grouping strategy to divide the soot particles into several groups and determine the representative size for each group. In this paper, several soot particle grouping strategies and the method to calculate the representative sizes are developed with the aim of balancing the computational efficiency and the prediction accuracy of the model. The performance of the MPS model when different grouping strategies are applied is investigated through the comparison of the predicted movement of soot particles generated from several materials. Based on this analysis a grouping strategy that results in the identification of three groups is shown to be sufficient to represent the influence of particle size on the gravitational settling for a variety of combustible materials and the computational cost of the extra governing equations for the transport of soot particles in the groups is acceptable. Furthermore, the efficiency of the model is demonstrated by simulating soot movement in a large-scale industrial building with a high ceiling

A review of the literature on human behaviour in dwelling fires

Most fire-related injuries and fatalities in the UK, and other parts of the world, continue to occur during fires in the home – incidents where it is acknowledged that human factors play a contributing role. Yet the field of fire safety lacks an up-to-date review of the literature on human behaviour during fires in domestic spaces. Given there is now a growing body of work looking at human behaviour in dwelling fires, a review of the literature in this area is timely. Drawing from published studies, this paper sets out what is currently known about human behaviour in dwelling fires and highlights the differences that appear to exist between these spaces and what is known and accepted about human behaviour in public, commercial and industrial spaces. This paper then goes on to consider the nature of “fire risk”, arguing that much of the work in this area continues to conflate, or fails to recognise the existence of, different types of risk profiles, instead considering fire risk as a single type of risk, based mainly on factors related to fatalities. However, research findings point towards fire risk as at least three separate forms: the risk of a fire occurring, the risk of fire injury and the risk of fire fatality. By drawing together the literature on human behaviour in dwelling fires this paper argues that those who survive dwelling fires cannot be considered as “near miss fatalities”, but instead must be treated as a separate and distinct group

A validation data-set and suggested validation protocol for ship evacuation models

An evacuation model validation data-set collected as part of the EU FP7 project SAFEGUARD is presented. The data was collected from a cruise ship operated by Royal Caribbean International (CS). The trial was a semi-unannounced assembly trial conducted at sea and involved some 2500 passengers. The trial took place at an unspecified time however, passengers were aware that on their voyage an assembly exercise would take place. The validation data-set consists of passenger; response times, starting locations, end locations and arrival times in the assembly stations. The validation data were collected using a novel data acquisition system consisting of ship-mounted beacons, each emitting unique Infra-Red (IR) signals and IR data logging tags worn by each passenger. The results from blind simulations using maritimeEXODUS for the assembly trial are presented and compared with the measured data. Three objective measures are proposed to assess the goodness of fit between the predicted model data and the measured data

Investigating the impact of occupant response time on computer simulations of the WTC North Tower evacuation

This work explores the impact of response time distributions on high-rise building evacuation. The analysis utilises response times extracted from printed accounts and interviews of evacuees from the WTC North Tower evacuation of 11 September 2001. Evacuation simulations produced using these “real” response time distributions are compared with simulations produced using instant and engineering response time distributions. Results suggest that while typical engineering approximations to the response time distribution may produce reasonable evacuation times for up to 90% of the building population, using this approach may underestimate total evacuation times by as much as 61%. These observations are applicable to situations involving large high-rise buildings in which travel times are generally expected to be greater than response time