Estimating the impact of residents with disabilities on the evacuation in a high-rise building: A simulation study

Abstract

In this paper, we study how seriously residents with disabilities affect the evacuation of other residents in a 24-story high-rise building environment through an agent-based simulation model. In particular, we analyze the trends of the evacuation times in two population scenarios, homogeneous (i.e., only residents without disabilities) and heterogeneous residents (i.e., residents with and without disabilities), while we vary the size of populations and the compositions of disability types of residents. According to our experimental results, residents with disabilities significantly delay the evacuation process by causing congestion and blocking phenomenon. Our experimental results also indicate that the differences in the evacuation time of the homogenous and the heterogeneous population scenarios become more significant as the population size increases because of serious congestion from the increased population size and blocking from the increased proportion of the handicapped. Finally, we present regression models and controlled evacuation strategies that help evacuation administrators ensure the safe evacuation of all the residents by controlling the number of residents and evacuate residents with disabilities efficiently. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.