Modelling and finding optimal evacuation strategy for tall buildings

Abstract

The construction of many tall buildings has brought increased interest in building regulations for timely evacuation. The 9/11 terrorist attacks and the recent fire event in Glenfell Tower in London raise concerns about the effectiveness of evacuation strategies of tall buildings. Thus, a method for finding an optimal evacuation strategy for tall buildings was proposed enabling people to use the available egress components in an optimal way. The introduced method took into consideration the stochastic nature of people's behaviour, modelling the randomness in decisions of people, and the capacities of egress components. The considered building evacuation procedure required using stairs, evacu..