Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Evacuation during emergency is a key issue to study. For the dense airport terminals, crowded movement under the maximum loading during emergency will give serious consequences. Safe evacuation is a concern to the Authority, especially for those terminals with difficulties in complying with the prescriptive fire codes. However, it is not feasible to carry out field tests to realize the evacuation time of the crowd during an emergency. Therefore, models simulating the evacuation of buildings are commonly used to study the evacuation pattern. BuildingEXODUS and SIMULEX are two of the widely used evacuation models, which were applied to study the evacuation in large and geometrically complex spaces with a high occupant level. Both models were applied to study the emergency evacuation in the arrival hall of the airport terminal in Hong Kong. Allowed figures on occupant loading in local codes were used. Four sets of scenarios were assessed in the crowded areas to realize the evacuation time of occupants under fire and normal conditions. From the simulated results on evacuation patterns, useful design parameters are derived. These are the maximum number of occupants leaving the zone, number of occupants leaving the hall within the target time, travel distances, waiting time and moving time of occupants in the airport terminal.