SIMULATION OF EMERGENCY EVACUATION IN DENSE-OCCUPANCY HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS

Abstract

To enhance the efficiency of emergency evacuation in high-rise buildings and formulate scientifically sound evacuation strategies, five strategies were designed in this study: no-command evacuation, downward evacuation, nearest refuge floor evacuation, speed-priority evacuation, and elevator-assisted evacuation, based on crowd evacuation dynamics theory. Using Pathfinder simulation software, the evacuation times associated with these strategies were compared, taking a typical 37-story residential building layout as an example. The strategy yielding the shortest evacuation time was identified. Results show that under the no-command evacuation scenario, the evacuation time was 248.8 seconds. Implementation of the nearest refuge floor strategy reduced the time to 232.0 seconds, a decrease of 6.7 %. With the speed-priority strategy, the evacuation time was further shortened to 215.8 seconds. When elevator-assisted evacuation was employed, the evacuation time decreased markedly to 193 seconds. These findings offer decision support and a theoretical reference for the development of emergency evacuation plans and the conduct of evacuation drills in high-rise buildings.