GIS-based Simulation Of Occupant Evacuation At Fire Scenes

With the rapid development of economy and urban construction in our country, the increasing damages due to fire have attracted great attentions. Life losses are the most dangerous phenomena under fire condition. To evaluate the evacuation efficiency for the building plans is therefore significant. With the continuous upgrade on computer software and hardware, the computational simulation becomes an important approach for the research on the occupant evacuation.This dissertation studies on the methods and related technologies to simulate the occupant evacuation at fire scenes based on GIS technology. By analyzing of fire scenes and investigation of the current statistics, the main variables at fire scenes were summarized: building environment, fire, combustion products and occupants. Based on this, the following research has been conducted.(1) Employ the GIS technology to analyze and represent the fire scenes. The processes of scene analysis and real-time spatial analysis are designed based on GIS. The extraction and analysis of geospatial information for evacuation scenarios are implemented and the 2d visualization for the simulation of occupant evacuation is realized.(2) Design and implement the system for the numerical simulation of fire and toxicity assessment of combustion products based on FDS. A spatio-temporal data model to represent FDS results is designed and the conversion interface from GIS model to FDS model is implemented, which can automatically generate FDS models from GIS models. A FDS-based process of toxicity assessment of fire and combustion products was realized according to the relevant studies.(3) Study on the methods to model the evacuation behaviors of occupants based on multi-agent theory. The basic parameters such as temporal and spatial variables are determined and the behavioral attributes for the agents are designed. Employing the spatial information captured by GIS analysis, the evacuation strategy was designed and implemented to simulate the behavioral response of occupants at fire scenes.(4) Study the theory and methods of model integration. A level-based collaboration mechanism was proposed and implemented to integrate sub-models in the evacuation model. The solutions to the related problems such as data exchange and transmission, the integrated data storage, model communication and the configuration of the access to the resource are obtained base on the studies.(5) Design the architecture for the system implementation. Microsoft .NET technology was employed to construct the system of evacuation simulation - AutoEscape and some examples were given to demonstrate the application of the system. Employing the evacuation simulation system, the influences of building plans on evacuation efficiency were analyzed and the preliminary suggestions were given accordingly to improve building plans.The case study demonstrates the feasibility and the effectiveness of the results obtained from this study. The system can be applied in the evaluation of evacuation efficiency for building plans and provide the references for the performance-based fire protection design, the building design and optimization, emergency evacuation drills and fire rescue command.