Performance-Based Evacuation Optimization for Teaching Building with Heterogeneous Populations: Simulation and Numerical Studies

Building evacuation safety has been one of the focal points of researchers, and there is a wealth of research findings for certain places (e.g., buildings with a high population density) or for particular research subjects (e.g., the physically challenged ethnic group). However, current publications are relatively rare in analyzing the features of physically impaired individuals in crowded places and their impact on the effectiveness of the whole evacuation process, including non-disabled people. Additionally, only such studies tend to concentrate on the behavioral characteristics of disabled people, which lack exploring and comparing evacuation optimization strategies and evaluation of comprehensive evacuation performance. This paper proposed a computer simulation-based method that combined horizontally phased evacuation and vertically phased evacuation, supplemented with the use of handicapped ramps and a reasonable arrangement of class locations, to achieve the optimal evacuation performance of a teaching building with special consideration of the heterogeneous population. And then, a simulated building model was constructed to test and compare the effectiveness and applicability of these approaches through 33 evacuation scenario studies. The results found that (1) component design can improve evacuation effectiveness, with the arrangement of ramps and the location of stair doors successfully reducing evacuation time by 12% and 6.6%, respectively; (2) a combination of two ramps and separate handicap access can decrease evacuation time by 18%; (3) the horizontal-phased evacuation approach drops evacuation time by 7.1%, but the vertical-phased evacuation strategy is not very efficient. When the two are successfully combined, evacuation time is further reduced to 9.2%; and (4) based on the above measures, the evacuation time can be finally shortened by 19% if the veteran teachers are concentrated in the classrooms on the lower floors. These obtained conclusions will provide significant reference and methodological support for the safe evacuation of other similar buildings with heterogeneous populations.