B010 Evacuee risk assessment

A risk assessment for evacuees in university teaching buildings

Brief:

The fire safety of institutional buildings is examined from the perspective of the risk of evacuees who would not be escaped from an unprotected space in the specified period of time through the exit doors. In this study, the evacuee’s flow rates at an exit door of 44 college students and their walking speeds under normal and emergency conditions were measured experimentally. A comprehensive survey on the transient occupant load at the campus of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University was conducted. With the results obtained, the probable risk of evacuees in the institutional buildings is evaluated for exit door dimensions with the door carrying capacity, with considerations of the uncertainties of the probable occupant loads and the specific flow rates at the exit. This result would be useful in the risk assessment for safe egress design of institutional buildings.

Further Information:

Cheung TF, Wong LT, 2004. A risk assessment for evacuees in university teaching buildings, Proceedings of the 2^nd Education Symposium on Advanced Fire Research (Papers from Hong Kong), 25 May, State Key Laboratory of Fire Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, Anhui, China, pp. 63-72.