This Digest provides practical advice and guidance on the use of numerical models to predict human behaviour during emergency building evacuation. This guidance is intended mainly for building designers, fire engineers, building control officers and other enforcers, model developers and researchers. This Digest focuses on evacuation from fires, but much of the discussion is also relevant to other emergency evacuation situations.
(A4, 12pp)

Contents

Introduction
Human behaviour in fire
- ASET and RSET timelines
- Simple ’rules of thumb’ for evacuation movement
- Unknowns and uncertainties (Pre-evacuation activities. Exit choice. People with a disability)
Modelling
- Why do it?
- Characteristics of different types of models (Repre-sentation of the building geometry and its implications. Human movement. Human behaviour. Route choice. The building population. Representa-tion of fire, smoke and other hazards)
- Validation
- Dealing with unknowns and uncertainties (Design behavioural scenarios. Sensitivity analysis. Monte Carlo simulation)
Conclusion
References