The influence of the location of emergency exits over the distance to be covered to the exit of an environment

Abstract In a building environment design, the positioning, size and quantity of the exits are fundamental aspects and have an intense relationship with the fire safety of the environments. An aspect that is influenced by these parameters is the average distance to be covered by occupants to the nearest exits during an escape in an emergency situation. The average distance could be used as a complementary measure of the safety of an environment (a lower average distance value indicates a probable faster evacuation rate). Thus, a pathfinder type algorithm to determine the value of the average distances to be covered to the nearest exit during an escape of an environment was detailed and implemented. Computational experiments were performed and the relationship between positioning, quantity and size of the exits and the value of the average distances were studied. The main conclusion was the importance of keeping the exits as far away from each other as possible in a given environment, so that a small distance to be covered could be obtained.

摘要 在建筑环境设计中，安全出口的位置、尺寸与数量是核心设计要素，其与建筑环境的消防安全水平紧密相关。上述参数会影响的一项关键指标，是紧急疏散场景下建筑内人员抵达最近安全出口所需的平均步行距离。该平均距离可作为评估建筑环境消防安全的补充评价指标：平均距离越短，人员整体疏散速率大概率越快。为此，本文详细设计并实现了一种寻路（pathfinder）类算法，用于计算建筑内人员紧急疏散至最近安全出口的平均步行距离。通过开展计算实验，本文分析了安全出口的位置、数量与尺寸对平均疏散距离的影响关系。研究得出的核心结论为：在给定建筑环境中，应尽可能使各安全出口间距最大化，以此实现更短的平均疏散距离。