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MINIMIZING THE EMERGENCY EVACUATION TIME OF A BUILDING COMPONENT

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2017, Master of Science, University of Akron, Civil Engineering.
Under fast development of urban areas, more and more large public buildings with complex structure appear, such as shopping center, theater, stadium etc. Crowd in these buildings is relatively large and intensive. Thus, occupant evacuation is becoming a particularly prominent problem in events of various disasters. Building evacuation plan is a key to the safer and faster movement of people away from different types of hazards such as industrial or nuclear accidents, natural disasters, fire, and viral outbreak. Every building has limited number of exit passes as the egress points. Hazard occurrence can result in blocking narrow exits and delay the building evacuation. However, an effective evacuation plan can help to make more efficient use of available exit point and improve the survivability of evacuees. According to the literature, all studies conducted for building evacuation time minimization have considered reactive approaches and do not purpose any proactive approach to reduce the evacuation time. Most of the proposed solutions are focused on either enforcing or guiding evacuees to egress routes and there is no mention of facility allocation approaches to efficiently distribute the building occupants. Then a methodology is developed to evacuate the occupants in the fastest way possible using the available egress points by two approaches - EVACNET+ simulation software and JAVA algorithm. A prototype design is developed in AutoCAD with necessary requirements and available data sources. The simulations are run in such a way that existing design patterns are validated and the improvements to design are made based on the current design. The affecting factors include average walking speeds, levels of service, space availability and different age groups are considered. Finally, a case study is conducted based on a real-world problem - the evacuation process of the Annual College Education Fair held at the SeaGate Convention Center. The problem is modeled with the state dependent stochastic model and an evacuation is conducted and suggested solutions for improvement are recommended.
Ping Yi, Dr. (Advisor)
Craig Menzemer, Dr. (Committee Member)
Junliang Tao, Dr. (Committee Member)
85 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Degala, V. K. Y. (2017). MINIMIZING THE EMERGENCY EVACUATION TIME OF A BUILDING COMPONENT [Master's thesis, University of Akron]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron149357659119714

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Degala, Vamshi Krishna Yadav. MINIMIZING THE EMERGENCY EVACUATION TIME OF A BUILDING COMPONENT. 2017. University of Akron, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron149357659119714.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Degala, Vamshi Krishna Yadav. "MINIMIZING THE EMERGENCY EVACUATION TIME OF A BUILDING COMPONENT." Master's thesis, University of Akron, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron149357659119714

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)