Performance modeling of an intelligent emergency evacuation system in buildings on accidental fire occurrence

Construction of multi-floor buildings have increased multifold in the urban areas due to scarcity of space for the growing population. There is a need for safe evacuation of people in such multi floor buildings during emergency situations such as fire occurrence. In this paper, we present an analytical model of the evacuation scenario on accidental fire using stochastic petri nets. The proposed evacuation model takes into account human behavior parameters such as panic among occupants, and realistic situations namely stampede in the stairwell, and distance of each occupant to the floor exits. The performance of the system is evaluated in terms of evacuation time, pre evacuation delay and average system throughput and compared with those of the evacuation model without human behavior and realistic constraints. The analytical results are validated using the real time evacuation drill measurements in a 10 storey building.