Evacuation Modelling of Fire Scenarios in Passenger Trains

Abstract

Fire incidents inside passenger trains constitute a significant risk factor for life safety. Therefore, it is necessary to count on a suitable evacuation strategy, during the instants previous to the rail vehicle halt and the subsequently evacuation. In this paper, the evacuation of passengers from different fire scenarios and several evacuation conditions were investigated. The analysis was divided into two stages of the evacuation process considering two different high speed trains: (1) the movement and behaviour of passengers in fire scenarios inside the vehicle before the train stopped, and (2) the analysis of train evacuation under different conditions. The results, obtained by means of the egress model STEPS (see MacDonald, STEPS Simulation of Transient and Pedestrian Movements User Manual), allowed to determine the influence of the limitations of the different train geometries under different evacuation conditions, give an estimation of the evacuation times and analyse the impact of human parameters considered in the evacuation process.