BUILDING EGRESS FLOW RATES – RESEARCH, APPLICATION LIMITATION

摘要

A fundamental part of building fire safety design across the world is the adequate provisionand location of exits and stairways. Over provision can simply lead to inefficiency. Areas of abuilding taken up by stairs and exit routes add little monetary value. An under provision of exits isnot acceptable, resulting in emergency egress (and ingress) times being either uncomfortable orhazardous. As such, exit width forms a fundamental part of design.This paper seeks to provide a further level of understanding for current building design, identifyingwhere building design is strong and weak in this field. The application of current approaches andtheir limitations, both at present and going forward, are highlighted.This research includes state-of-the-art technology, provided by Axiomatic, to automatically countpeople queuing through exits. The automatic nature of this approach, applied in this research context,sheds new light on egress flow rates which can help inform building design in the future. This workis ongoing with preliminary findings highlighted.