A Review of Building Evacuation Models - NIST Virtual Library

A.4 WAYOUT
Developer: V.O. Shestopal, Fire Modelling & Computing, AU
Purpose of the model: WAYOUT has been created to compute traffic flow in emergency
situations from a multi-room or multi-story building. In this model, only merging flows are
considered 11, 12 .
Availability to the public for use: The model is available from Fire Modelling & Computing in
Australia as part of FireWind (18 programs) and the price is negotiable.
Modeling method: Movement model
Structure of model: This is a coarse network system. The model labels each compartment of
constant width with a number and refers to this compartment as a “twig.” If the compartment
has a variable width, it is divided into multiple twigs. For a building evacuation with multiple
exits, it is up to the user to draw “watersheds” to divide the flows (on the basis of psychological
or other considerations) and compute the route separately. The method of labeling nodes in
WAYOUT is shown in Figure A.5.
Figure A.5: Example of how nodes are labeled in WAYOUT
12, p. 628
Perspective of model: The model views the occupants globally as “packs.” And, since the
occupants have only one route to choose from, the occupants’ perspective will be labeled as
global, also.
Occupant behavior: None.
Occupant movement: The movement of the occupants is based on density versus speed data
collected by Predtechenskii and Milinskii 13 . Density is defined as D=Nf/wL, where N is the
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