A Review of Building Evacuation Models - NIST Virtual Library

A.15 EESCAPE (Emergency Escape)
Developer: E. Kendik, Cobau Ltd. Argentinierstr. Austria
Purpose of the model: The purpose of this model is to address the time sequence from the time
at which people begin evacuation from the floors until they reach the outside or approved area of
refuge in the building 11, 72 . The program allows the user to change the dimensions of the
building’s means of egress and the occupant load to assess the influence of the egress system
variations.
Availability to the public for use: The model is operated by the developer for the outside user.
Modeling method: This is a movement model.
Structure of model: This is a coarse network system. The model seems to acknowledge only
a corridor, stair, and exit arrangement.
Perspective of model: The model views the occupants globally as a single group of occupants
per floor moving as a homogeneous mass to the exit. The occupants also view the building with
a global perspective because there is only one exit to travel to.
Occupant behavior: No behavior is modeled.
Occupant movement: As mentioned earlier, the model considers the population to be a single
group of a certain mean density on each section of the escape route. The calculated density on
each component of the escape route is used to calculate the speed of the occupant through the
escape route (Kendik references the work of Pauls and Predtechenskii and Milinskii). The
partial flows from the floor, which are equivalent in number on each story of the building,
evacuate and enter the staircase at the same time. If the partial flows from each floor interact
with each other in the staircase, the model then uses calculation methods for occupant flow under
(stair width is still adequate to handle merging flow) and above (congestion occurs) maximum
flow on stairs. The user inputs the number of persons using the escape route.
Output: The output from this model is the total evacuation time.
Use of fire data: None.
Import CAD drawings: No. The user supplies the escape route configuration to the model,
which is assumed to be identical on each floor of the building. Also, the number of floors is
specified by the user. The user enters the length and width of the corridor leading to the stairs
and door width, the length and width of the stairway, and the greatest travel distance along the
corridor.
Visualization capabilities: None.
Validation studies: The model is calibrated against data from evacuation tests carried out at the
University of Karlsruhe. No further information is supplied.
A-53