Simulation of the Emergency Evacuation of Complex Buildings Using ISI

Evacuation is a vitally important component of emergency management. Effective evacuation planning and evacuation management can be the difference between safety and tragedy in an emergency situation. However, in an emergency evacuation of any large complex building, there is a tendency for serious congestion of evacuees to occur in some areas even while other nearby exit areas are experiencing relatively light usage. The consequences are very serious, involving a direct threat to public safety, and adding to the likelihood of the onset of panic amongst evacuees. Recently a whole range of computer-based techniques have been developed to assist in both assessing the safety of existing or proposed buildings, and in evaluating the relative merits of alternative evacuation procedures and policies. This paper investigates the use of the simulation environment ISI, which uses the powerful SIMAN simulation language, in evacuation modelling. ISI is used to develop a library of simulation sub-models representing the components of typical buildings and to synthesise these sub-models into a detailed model of a typical complex building. The results of several model runs are compared in order to identify worst possible cases. The ease with which changes to the configuration or usage of the building as well as changes to evacuation procedures may be modelled is discussed. This technique is thus shown to provide a means of rapidly and conclusively establishing the best of a number of alternative strategies, and thus the approach is shown to offer tremendous advantages over conventional techniques.