Principles and Practice of Evacuation Modelling: (No. 02/1M/90 CMS Press Paper S.)

The ability to enable efficient circulation of people in heavily populated enclosures is important to the day to day operation of large commercial buildings such as airport terminals, railway and underground stations, shopping malls and cinemas. More importantly, it is an essential design feature in the event of emergency situations. As architects continue to implement novel concepts in building design, they are increasingly finding that the fixed criteria of the traditional methods of prescriptive building codes are too restrictive. This is due in part to their almost total reliance on configurational considerations such as travel-distance and exit width. Furthermore, as these traditional prescriptive methods are insensitive to human behaviour or likely fire scenarios, it is unclear if they indeed offer the optimal solution in terms of evacuation efficiency. The emergence of performance based building codes together with computer based evacuation models offer the potential of overcoming these shortfalls and addressing the needs not only of the designers but also the legislators. However, if such models are to make a useful contribution they must address the configurational, environmental, behavioural and procedural aspects of the evacuation process. Over the past 15 years a variety of different modelling methodologies have been developed by which to represent the evacuation process. Furthermore, within these various modelling methodologies, there are also a number of ways in which to represent the enclosure, population and the behaviour of the population. The myriad approaches which are available has led to the development of some 22 different evacuation models which are currently available. However, while the modelling tools have proliferated, there has not been a corresponding transfer of knowledge and understanding of the discipline from the model developer to the general user. It is a serious shortfall of which the lack of suitable engineering courses dealing with the subject is symptomatic, if not the cause. Simply possessing a computer to run the models is not enough to exploit these sophisticated tools. They can too easily become 'black boxes' producing magic answers in exciting colour graphics and client-satisfying 'virtual reality' imagery. As well as a fundamental understanding of the range of human psychological and physiological responses to fire, the fire safety engineer must have at least a rudimentary understanding of the theoretical basis supporting evacuation models to appreciate their limitations and capabilities. The five day short course, 'Principles and Practice of Evacuation Modelling' run by the University of Greenwich attempts to bridge the divide between the model developer and the general user, providing them with the expertise they need to understand evacuation modelling. These concepts and techniques are introduced and demonstrated in a series of seminars. Those attending, also gain experience in using the methods during "hands-on" tutorial and workshop sessions.