The former study presents the results of an international online survey carried out in 2011 aimed at investigating the main factors affecting the selection and use of computer pedestrian evacuation models, as well as identification of the most used and popular models. Initial attempts to address this issue were in studies carried out by Ronchi and Kinsey and Lovreglio et al. As such, it is of key importance to better understand current users’ experiences and their needs for next generations of computer pedestrian evacuation models.
To date, the number of computer pedestrian evacuation models for fire safety engineering applications and their complexity is continuously increasing. , in which 27 crowd simulation models suitable for evacuation purposes were compared. Another review was carried out in in 2013 by Duives et al. have provided a review of 22 and 26 pedestrian evacuation models respectively by categorizing them depending on their features such as modelling method, validation, refinement of population, structure, and simulated behaviour. Since this study, several other computer pedestrian evacuation models have been developed using different approaches to simulate evacuee behaviours. One of the first attempts to develop a computer pedestrian evacuation models was done in the 1970s by Bazjanac to investigate elevator performance in high-rise buildings in emergency scenarios. Today such tools are widely adopted in the building design process where performance-based design is applied. Given this definition, pedestrian evacuation models refer here to any egress model, pedestrian model, or crowd model that can be used to represent emergency evacuation scenarios. Such studies have been used as the basis for the development of several pedestrian evacuation models: computational models able to represent the movement and/or behaviour of people during an emergency evacuation scenario using either microscopic, macroscopic, or mesoscopic approaches. Investigations on how people behave during fire emergencies have been carried out for over a century with some of the first investigations dating back to 1909 focusing on the study of movement speeds.
#Import pathfinder model to pyrosim verification
In addition, the most used models were identified, and the results highlighted that the three key factors used to select a pedestrian evacuation model are overall consistent with the results of the 2011 survey: verification and validation, documentation, and data output of the model. The results identified a total of 72 pedestrian evacuation models currently in use and indicated the most known models. The respondents had a wide range of education and occupational backgrounds and use models for a variety of different purposes. The survey was completed by 234 respondents from 41 countries.
Results with the previous survey were compared to identify any changes in preference and usage by pedestrian evacuation model users. The survey represents an expanded version of a previous survey conducted by the authors in 2011. As such, the survey allowed the collection of information useful for instructing future pedestrian evacuation model development. This survey consisted of 22 questions focusing on: the assessment of the pedestrian evacuation model user community their stated importance of model features to select a model usage/awareness of models knowledge of model validation and verification training and usage of multiple models. Within this paper, a summary of data collected via an international online survey regarding the models and users’ experiences and needs is presented. Pedestrian evacuation models are often used to assess life safety in the performance-based design process within fire safety engineering.