Safety of users in road evacuation: pedestrian outflow models in a building

Abstract

In this paper we present some results obtained in the research project entitled SURE, carried out by the Laboratory for Transport Systems Analysis (LAST) of the Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria (Italy).The general objective of the project is risk reduction in urban areas in terms of exposure through the definition and implementation of evacuation procedures. One of the activities concerns the specification and calibration of a system of models able to simulate the transportation system when a population has to evacuate due to a forthcoming disaster. This paper concerns the simulation of pedestrian outflow related to the evacuation of a building, using flow models calibrated on the basis of data collected during experimentation on a test site. This experimentation was conducted in a school in an Italian town but the methodology used can be applied to any building with homogeneous characteristics in terms of activities (i.e. offices, banks, commercials, schools).

Safety of users in road evacuation: modelling and DSS for pedestrian outflow

“…Paths were obtained from the school evacuation plan. As regards the cost functions adopted, for fictitious links a constant speed function was considered; for corridors and descending flights relationships between speed and specific flow specified and calibrated in [36] has been considered. Demand values used in the simulation were obtained from school attendance on the experimentation day, and users were located in offices and classrooms following the real distribution.…”

“…Many of such models can also simulate evacuation from other types of structures. The considered models, in alphabetical order, are the following: ALLSAFE [4], ASERI [5][6][7], buildingEXODUS [3,[8][9][10], CRISP [11,12], EESCAPE [13], EGRESS [14][15][16], EVACNET4 [17,18], EXIT89 [19][20][21], EXITT [22,23], FPETool [24], GridFlow [25], Legion [26,27], PathFinder [28], PedGo [29,30], PEDROUTE/PAXPORT [31][32][33], SICURO [34][35][36], Simulex [37][38][39], STEPS [40,41], TIMTEX [42], WAYOUT [43].…”

Signal setting design on a road network: application of a system of models in evacuation conditions

“…The results concern the development of models, procedures and guidelines that support transport planning in evacuation conditions. Specific research lines defined in SICURO concern travel demand [3,4], planning processes and guidelines [5,6], paths of emergency vehicles [7,8], pedestrian outflow from buildings [9], transport supply and demand-supply interaction.…”

A system of models for signal setting design of a signalized road network in evacuation conditions

“…The general objective of the project was risk reduction in urban areas in terms of exposure through the definition and implementation of evacuation procedures [1][2][3][4][5][6]. The results concern the development of models, procedures and guidelines [7][8][9] for simulation in evacuation conditions of travel demand [10][11][12], transport supply and demand-supply interaction [13][14][15], path design of emergency vehicles [16][17][18], and pedestrian outflow from a building simulation [19][20][21].…”