RiMEA: A Way to Define a Standard for Evacuation Calculations

Abstract

Since many years the RiMEA-Richtlinie (Richtlinie für Mikroskopische Evakuierungs Analysen - Guideline for Microscopic Evacuation Analyses; RiMEA-Guideline) is a guideline for German-speaking authorities to check evacuation analyses of complex buildings. Based on the RiMEAGuideline expert reports are written to ensure that the fundamental questions of an evacuation analysis are answered. Since April 2012, a German DIN Specification (like a pre-Standard) for evacuation calculations (DIN Spec 91284:201204) is available. This DIN Specification is based on the RiMEA-Guideline and was developed in collaboration with the RiMEA society (RiMEA e. V.). The paper will show how this DIN Specification (DIN Spec 91284:2012-04) was developed and what kind of requirements have to be fulfilled to transform the RiMEA-Guideline to this German DIN Specification. Additionally we will show what are the differences between this DIN Specification and the RiMEAGuideline. Furthermore our paper gives an overview about the actual RiMEAGuideline and shows a short comparison between the RiMEA-Guideline and the IMO-Guideline MSC.1/Circ.1238 (Guidelines for Evacuation Analyses for New and Existing Passenger Ships). At the end we will give an overview about test cases, which are implemented in the RiMEA-Guideline.