An optimization method for the distance between exits of buildings considering uncertainties based on arbitrary polynomial chaos expansion

Abstract

optimization method for the distance between exits of buildings considering uncertainties based on arbitrary polynomial chaos expansion, ReliabilityEngineering and System Safety, http://dx. ABSTRACTThe distance between exits is an important design parameter in fire safety design of buildings. In order to find the optimal distance between exits under uncertainties with a low computational cost, the surrogate model (i.e. approximation model) of evacuation time is constructed by the arbitrary polynomial chaos expansion. Through a two-stage nested Monte Carlo simulation of this surrogate model, the optimal distance between exits under uncertainty is found efficiently. In order to demonstrate the proposed method, a single room with two exits is presented as a fire compartment and uncertainties of occupant density and child-occupant load ratio are also considered. In this case, the results showed that the optimal distance between exits changes with the level of probability of evacuation time, and there is a critical level of probability for the transition of the optimal value of the distance between exits. Furthermore, the traditional Monte Carlo simulation method is used to compare the accuracy of the surrogate model with the computer evacuation model FDS+Evac developed by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland [1]. The results indicate that the proposed surrogate-based optimization method can achieve a similar accuracy with a much lower computational cost.

Building evacuation time optimization using constraint-based design approach

“…Li put in shortest-path and following-up behavior to his pedestrian evacuation model to find out the weakness of the floor plan and improved the evacuation efficiency by changing the exit location in a supermarket (Yue et al, 2011). Xie conducted a two-stage nested Monte Carlo simulation on a simple single room and found the optimal distance between exits with minimum evacuation time (Xie et al, 2016). These above-mentioned researches are aiming at changing the exit location to reduce the evacuation time.…”

Numerical analysis and staircase layout optimisation for a Ro-Ro passenger ship during emergency evacuation

“…Based on the unique characteristics of passenger vessel evacuations, some researchers are committed to developing new evacuation simulation tools to analyse the evacuation process and predict the number of casualties to determine the evacuation possibilities of passengers in various disaster scenarios, modify the design of crowded points during the ship construction phase, and improve the safety and reliability of a ship [3,26,60]. Based on the original social force model, Kang et al [61] incorporated the tendency force of pedestrians' downward sliding into the evacuation model on an inclined deck with coordinates suitable for the human body, and described the evacuation process of different shipwreck scenes.…”

“…Almost all maritime emergency evacuation analyses one always uses the evacuation time or assembly time as performance indicators [16]. Evacuation analysis is affected by various factors such as the geometric structure, population composition, and environmental factors [3,28,38,51]. For validation purposes, by referring to the research of Sarvari et al [16] and comparing the obtained results with the IMO guideline, the effectiveness of the simulation model is verified as follows.…”

“…In recent years, the frequency and scale of crowd events have been increasing, and the issue of the safe evacuation of individuals in crowded spaces has attracted increased attention [1][2][3]. This has stimulated the research in the fields of emergency preparedness and evacuation modelling [4,5].…”

Application of the polynomial dimensional decomposition method in a class of random dynamical systems

“…The goal is to allow an estimate of dynamic responses generated by these considerations on physical parameters. There are a variety of methods in a view of uncertainties for this type of issues: such as the perturbation method [16,17], Neumann method [18,19], MCS method [20][21][22], polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) method [23][24][25], and PDD method [26][27][28]. The perturbation method is based on the expansion of random quantities into Taylor series [29], and the Neumann method is on the basis of Neumann series [30,31], they can both solve the small random fluctuations problems but do not fit for the case close to the resonant frequency.…”