Vertical transport systems for evacuation from high-rise buildings

Abstract

The article discusses the possibility of using the elevators as the main evacuation path from high-rise buildings. It starts by analysis of the reasons, which make effective evacuation of people from high-rise buildings difficult. The high multi-storey office building was modelled in the Pathfinder software package. There are presented some scenarios of the human flow and their influence on time parameters (the evacuation start and signal delivery delay), on flow composition (ratio of people with different mobility) and base evacuation level of each group. The time of evacuation is compared on the staircase and using elevators. It is effective to use evacuation elevators in 60-storey buildings, but it is not rational to use them in 20-storey building.