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Author
Francis, R. L. | Chalmet, L. G.
Title
Network Models for Building Evacuation: A Prototype Primer.
Coporate
Florida Univ., Gainesville
Sponsor
National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
Report
NBS GCR 81-316, March 1981, 251 p.
Distribution
Available from National Technical Information Service
Contract
GRANT-NB79NAD0021
Keywords
buildings | egress | emergencies | evacuation
Abstract
This document is a prototype primer on the network modeling of building evacuation. We call the document a primer because it is intended as an introduction to the subject. We call the document a prototype primer because, while students have successfully used the approaches we present we have not, as of this writing, had an opportunity to teach from the primer. If you think of a building evacuation as involving the flow of people through well defined passageways, it is natural to consider the evacuation problem to be a network flow problem. We believe you will discover, as compared to other approaches, that network approaches can be cheaper, more precise, can handle larger problem, and, because they can be used quickly and allow data to be changed easily, they greatly facilitate the comparison of many alternatives. A sequence of three successively more general and more detailed types of network models is presented, which we term for convenience the Graphical Model, the Intermediate Model, and the Dynamic Model respectively. Since the Intermediate and Dynamic Models share a number of common network modeling features, prior to considering the Intermediate Model we devote a chapter to basic network modeling ideas. The last two chapters contain a case study along with conclusions and a few works of warning.