Planning Building Renovation Projects for Safe Evacuation Provisions-An Agent-Based Modelling Approach (original) (raw)
Related papers
Integration of Building Information Modeling and Agent-Based Modeling for Evacuation Simulation
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a highly advanced spatial modeling method that is fully incorporated in the building lifecycle. With the support of Information Technologies, the use of BIM has become common in building management such as energy efficiency, indoor navigation and emergency evacuation simulations. This study focuses on emergency evacuation simulations since, integrating BIM and Spatial Information Science, could mitigate casualties in emergencies. Traditional evacuation management methods are generally inadequate since they are based on 2D evacuation plans, they are static and do not consider the characteristics/interactions of the people in the building. This study aims to integrate BIM and Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) for emergency evacuation simulations, where characteristics of the building and the users are incorporated. Istanbul Technical University Faculty of Civil Engineering was selected as study area and the BIM model was created by using the CAD drawings of the floor plans. The users of the Faculty building such as students, academicians, administrative staff and visitors are considered for simulations. The BIM model was transferred to the ABM environment, and the routes used during the fire evacuation were generated. Fire evacuation simulations were performed, where agents having different characteristics evacuate the building according to the rules predefined. Three different scenarios were tested. Major conclusion of this study is that, via integrating BIM and ABM, it is possible to model people's behavior within a three-dimensional digital environment, where decision-makers could be performing simulations such as fire evacuation supported by dynamic, realistic and accurate information.
Automation in Construction, 2019
Despite recent technological advancements in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries, the number of fire-caused fatalities in residential and commercial buildings in the United States over the last decade has consistently been an order of magnitude higher than fatalities caused by all other types of natural disasters combined. In this research, EvacuSafe is developed as a tool for designers to allow for layout optimization of buildings and facilities in terms of their evacuation safety performance. Contributions of this research include the development and validation of two spatiotemporal risk indices to quantify the safety of the egress routes and individual building compartments. Other unique advantages of EvacuSafe include the seamless integration of fire dynamics simulation, agent-based crowd simulation and building information models (BIM) using IFC data structures, allowing EvacuSafe to be readily used by designers to analyze a building layout design under various fire scenarios and for layout design optimization based on multiple safety criteria. The development of the framework, the risk indices, and the IFC-based integration is illustrated and validated through a case study on a two-story office building with 59 compartments. The results of the implementation show that the EvacuSafe is a valuable tool for evacuation design and planning that provides a more comprehensive evaluation of the evacuation performance in comparison to the existing indices and safety measures in the industry.
Fire
As the possibility of safe escape is one of the most crucial aspects of a building’s fire safety features, understanding of human behaviour under fire conditions is important for a successful evacuation. Although most of today’s buildings are equipped with fire safety systems, a fire can still occur at anytime and anywhere in a building and have devastating consequences. In the last decade, researchers and practitioners have used information technology to assist with fire safety design and emergency management. Building Information Modelling (BIM) is an exemplar process whose underpinning digital technology has been helpful for fire safety design, simulation, and analysis, but there is a lack of research on how BIM-based models combined with agent-based simulations can help improve evacuation via effective navigation and wayfinding in high-rise residential buildings. Customising evacuation instructions based on BIM, simulation results and occupant location, and delivery of these bes...
Journal of the civil engineering forum, 2022
Evacuation is an important issue during the occurrence of an earthquake, due to the influence of people's responsive behaviours to the disaster. This indicates the occurrence of overcrowded conditions, which causes the conflict of people's movement. It is also one of the main reasons the process of evacuation is difficult, leading to the necessity to specifically model the movement within each building. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the earthquake evacuation modelling in Faculty of Engineering building, University of Bengkulu, Indonesia. This used a multi-agent programmable modelling environment known as NetLogo, which adopted an ABM model that is often utilized to observe elemental movement response. The agents occupying the building also moved to the stairs and evacuation doors, for exit towards the assembly point, which was located in front and behind Faculty of Engineering. The agent-based modelling is then conducted by inputting the layout of the building and the number of occupants in each room. Furthermore, the simulations were performed by considering various agents' capacity in the building, during the evacuation. The results showed the time taken for the agents to exit the building during the disaster. This confirmed that the required exit time generally decreased with the increasing population percentage in the building. During this process, the conflict point also occurred around the corridor of Floors 1 and 2 (T1, T2 and T3), as well as the exits of the building (P1, P2, P3, and P4). This was due to the occurrence of a high density when agents carry out evacuation movements. Based on these results, the placement of signs was recommended, as guidelines during the evacuation process.
Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation for evacuation of people from a building in case of fire
Procedia Computer Science, 2018
The evacuation of people from a building on fire is a task which can prove to be very difficult, in particular because of the influence of human behavior, but also of the type of people or the evacuation place configuration. Thus, it is crucial to think on how to organize the evacuation upstream for a situation of emergency can give rise disorganization, on one hand because of panic which grips evacuees, and on the other end because of the large quantity of evacuees in dangerous conditions. These recent years, several fire evacuation models have been proposed. Unfortunately, most of these models do not clearly define the parameters to be considered for their effective evaluations. These models consider, more generally, the number of survivors as a key parameter of evaluation. The purpose of this paper is to propose an intelligent Agent-Based Model enabling the modelling and simulation of evacuation of people from a building on fire. Our proposed model is based on four parameters that allow her practical evaluation. A case study of simulation is carried out in a building having the general configuration of Kinshasa supermarkets. This model is general enough for it to be implemented in several types of commercial buildings without major changes.
Agent-Based Fire Evacuation Model as a Tool for Fire Safety Design Assessment in Malaysia
International Journal of Property Sciences
Evacuation model is an important tool in formulating performance-based building design. It is a tool aims at helping designers assess the robustness of their design against factors such as human behaviour in fire. Currently, performance-based code for fire safety design has been the hot trend all over the world. Nevertheless, even though Malaysia is applying prescriptive-based code, performance-based approach for special buildings and mega projects are allowed. This shows that it is just a matter of time before performance-based code be fully adopted in place of prescriptive-based code in Malaysia. This paper aims to highlight how evacuation modelling may help designers assess the performance of their design. In this paper, an example of evacuation scenario was modelled and simulated using an agent-based fire evacuation model-FDS+Evac. The output of the simulation provide graphical representation such as the fire curve, the evacuation time, and the time to untenable condition that can be used to analyse the life safety objective based on concepts of ASET and RSET. The FED values of all occupants throughout the evacuation process are less than tenability criteria (0.3 FED). Therefore, it is concluded that all occupants have evacuated safely in the event of fire.
Agent-based evacuation model of large public buildings under fire conditions
It is an important issue that all occupants should be able to evacuate to safety from large public buildings under fire conditions. In this paper, a system simulation model is presented, in which a physical model and a mathematical model are included. Based on the agent technology, a computer program is developed to simulate and analyze the egress progress in large public buildings through combining rule reasoning with numerical calculation, and some crowd pedestrian flow phenomenon, such as aching, rerouting, etc, could be observed from visual illustration of the scenarios. By coupling with the fire scenario simulated by CFD technology, the computer simulation program may represent the overall and dynamic process of occupants' evacuation under fire expansion, and the mutual relationship between occupants' safety and fire hazard. An indoor stadium which was used as a competition venue for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is studied as a case.
Simulating The Building Evacuation By Using Agents *
2012
The concept of an agent first appeared in the seventies in the previous century. The popularity of agent based system has increased swiftly because agent has intelligence, ability to reason and autonomy in simple terms we can say an agent is anything that can be viewed as perceiving its environment through sensors and acting upon that environment through effectors. Intelligent agents have mind which are capable of choice they can mentally figure out the problem how to solve it and what actions are to be taken in order to maximize its chances of success they are autonomous entities they can decide by themselves and have ability to act according to situation without any direct intervention of humans. In this work, agent-based simulation is proposed as a method to help in the evaluation of security in buildings by simulating their evacuation. These types of simulations allow us to measure evacuation time from the building and test their performance in the building security, which can b...
Agent-based simulation as a tool for the built environment
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2013
There is a growing need to increase the performance of the built environment through a combination of improved design, retrofitting of existing structures, and behavioral and policy change. Increased performance includes decreasing construction and operational costs, improving efficiency, reducing energy consumption and overall carbon footprint, and increasing the health, safety, and comfort of building occupants. Data collection and analysis are central to ongoing efforts in performance improvement. The growth of sensor and monitoring technologies, coupled with the proliferation of building automation systems, is quickly leading to an explosion in the amount, quality, and format of building performance data. What is needed are methodologies for extracting viable information from these data and using the results to effect meaningful change. Furthermore, occupant behavior and attitudes must be taken into account. This paper summarizes agent-based simulation and describes its potential as an approach to support analysis, design, and performance improvements in the built environment.
Modelling occupant interaction with fire conditions using the buildingEXODUS evacuation model
Fire Safety Journal, 2001
This paper provides a broad overview of project HEED (High Rise Evacuation Evaluation Database) and the methodologies employed in the collection and storage of first-hand accounts of evacuation experiences derived from face-to-face interviews of evacuees from the World Trade Center (WTC) Twin Towers complex on 11 September 2001. In particular the paper describes the development of the HEED database. This is a flexible research tool which contains qualitative type data in the form of coded evacuee experiences along with the full interview transcripts. The data and information captured and stored in the HEED database is not only unique, but provides a means to address current and emerging issues relating to human factors associated with the evacuation of high rise buildings.