Dederichs, Anne

Larusdottir, Aldis Run

Online Research Database In Technology

                       General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.  • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal   If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.     Downloaded from orbit.dtu.dk on: Dec 17, 2017Evacuation of school childrenComparison of studies from Denmark, Spain and BrazilLarusdottir, Aldis Run; Dederichs, Anne SimonePublished in:Proceedings of Fire Safety Day 2013Publication date:2013Document VersionPublisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordLink back to DTU OrbitCitation (APA):Larusdottir, A. R., & Dederichs, A. (2013). Evacuation of school children: Comparison of studies from Denmark,Spain and Brazil. In Proceedings of Fire Safety Day 2013DTU	  Fire	  Safety	  Day	  2013	   *allar@byg.dtu.dk	   Page	  1	   Evacuation of school children Comparison of studies from Denmark, Spain and Brazil  Aldis Run Larusdottir* & Anne S. Dederichs Technical University of Denmark, Department of Civil Engineering  Many countries have implemented performance based fire codes, where instead of following the prescriptive requirements the safety level of a building is evaluated by holding the required safe egress time (RSET) for the occupants in the building up against the available safe egress time (ASET). In order to make a design that enables all persons in a building equal and safe egress, mixed populations need to be described. However, studies on young, able bodied people have been used in experiments for retrieving input data for models. A large part of the actual population comprehending old and young aged people as well as people with impairments is badly described in present literature, forcing designers to use data to represent other parts of the population than it is documented for.  Some handbooks and design guides mention special measures regarding children. However, the documentation is little and incoherent. There exists neither an evacuation theory including movement parameters that specially applies for children nor a guideline stating when it is appropriate or realistic to apply adult´s values regarding evacuation, on children and youth. All in all literature provides very limited data on children´s movement parameters and evacuation behavior.   In recent years the fire safety society has been catching up and new evacuation data on various subgroups has been produced1,2,3,4. The data collection will hopefully continue so that the whole of the population can be represented when it comes to fire safety. Starting in 2009 the Technical University of Denmark has contributed to the data collection regarding evacuation of children through the KESØ project5,6. The focus has mainly been on pre-school aged children, that are children aged 0-6 years, and that research is still ongoing. However, in year 2010 data was collected from full scale fire drills in elementary schools in Denmark7 for children aged 6-15. The drills were partly unannounced as the teachers knew the day of the drill and in most of the schools the drill had been explained to the youngest students, since this was their first. The films were among others analyzed for travel speed and evacuation behavior, while moving down stairs. At least two more studies8, 9 on children have been carried out in recent time including school evacuations, in Spain and Brazil, presenting evacuation parameters and new data on children.   Cultural differences have been found to make a difference in travel speed as a function of density when comparing results from Germany and India10. Furthermore an evacuation drill involving two groups of university students in Australia and Sweden also showed a cultural effect on the evacuation behavior. A different degree of seriousness, as well as group behavior could be seen, where the fire alarm was taken more serious in Australia than in the Swedish drill11.   The goal of the present work is to compare the results of the three studies that all provide some numerical data regarding travel speed. However observations have been made on different areas. The Danish study looked at handholding during the evacuation7, the Spanish observed if the children placed one or both legs on each step8 and the Brazilian studied how the speed of the leading child in each group influenced the total movement speed9.   DTU	  Fire	  Safety	  Day	  2013	   *allar@byg.dtu.dk	   Page	  2	   REFERENCES  1	  Kholshevnikov,V.V., Samoshin, D.A. and Parfenenko, A.P. (2009) Pre-School and School Children Building Evacuation, Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Human Behaviour in Fire 2009, Robinson College, Cambridge, UK.  2 Sørensen, J.G. (2011) Evacuation from buildings of people with visual disabilities. (M.Sc. Thesis) Technical University of Denmark, Department of Civil Engineering.  3 Boyce, K. E., Shields, T. J., & Silcock, G. W. (1999). Toward the Characterization of Building Occupancies for Fire Safety Engineering: Prevalence, Type, and Mobility of Disabled people. Fire Technology , 35 (1), pp. 35-50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1015335132296  4 Boyce, K. E., Shields, T. J., & Silcock, G. W. (1999). Toward Characterization of Building Occupancies for Fire Safety Engineering: Capability of Disabled People Moving Horizontally and on an Incline. Fire Technology , 35 (1), pp. 51-67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1015339216366  5 Larusdottir, A.R. and Dederichs, A.S. (2010) Evacuation of Children: Movement on Stairs and on Horizontal Plane, Fire Technology special issue.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10694-010-0177-6   6 Larusdottir, A.R. and Dederichs, A.S. (2011) A Step Towards Including Children’s Evacuation Parameters and Behavior in Fire Safe Building Design. Proceedings of the Tenth International Symposium, International Association for Fire Safety Science.  7 Larusdottir, A.R. and Dederichs, A.S. (2012) Behavioral Aspects of Movement Down Stairs During Elementary School Fire Drills. Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium Human Behaviour in Fire 2012, Cambridge, Downing Collage, UK.  8Capote, J.a., Alvear, D., Cuesta, A. and Hernando, J. (2012) Children evacuation: Empirical Data and Egress Modelling. Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium Human Behaviour in Fire 2012, Cambridge, Downing Collage, UK.   9Ona, R., Valentin, M.V. and Vittorino, F. (2012) Walking Speed Data of Fire Drills at an Elementary School. Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium Human Behaviour in Fire 2012, Cambridge, Downing Collage, UK.  10Chattaraj, U., Seyfried, A. and Chakroborty, P. (2009) Comparison of Pedestrian Fundamental Diagram across Cultures. Advances in Complex Systems, 35(3), pp.393-405.   11Andrée, K. and Eriksson, B. (2008) Cultural differences in an evacuation scenario- A study comparing Australian and Swedish responses, Lund, Sweden: Department of Fire Safety Engineering, Lund University. 

Evacuation of school children:Comparison of studies from Denmark, Spain and Brazil

http://orbit.dtu.dk/ws/files/83794601/Evacuation%20of%20school%20children%20Comparison%20of%20studies%20from%20Denmark,%20Spain%20and%20Brazil%20.pdf

Evacuation of school children:Comparison of studies from Denmark, Spain and Brazil

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Online Research Database In Technology