- Author
- Pauls, J.
- Title
- Calculating Evacuation Times for Tall Buildings.
- Coporate
- National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
- Journal
- Fire Safety Journal, Vol. 12, No. 3, 213-236, December 1987
- Book or Conf
- Society of Fire Protection Engineers. Quantitative Methods for Life Safety Analysis. Symposium. March 5-7, 1986., College Park, MD, 32 p., 1987
- Keywords
- evacuation
- Abstract
- A great deal has been written, especially over the last 18 years, on the subject of calculating how much time is needed to evacuate tall buildings. Therefore both the author and the reader, contemplating this latest contribution, might well ask, "Why bother with it?" Is there a problem that will be solved, or solved in a better fashion, through additional writing or reading effort related to such calculations? What follows is an extended affirmative answer to this latter question. Included are a summary of the history of thinking on this subject, examples of calculation methods--particularly relatively simple ones, information on some actual evacuations, and some general precautions. This author feels strongly that some of the existing literature contains errors or information that is of little use in most real-world applications. Therefore this paper contains warnings on what to avoid as well as offering some modest contributions to the rapidly growing technology of fire protection engineering.