An aggregate approach to simulate evacuation of a building

This paper concerns a method for the simulation of pedestrian outflow related to the evacuation of a building. In particular the proposed method allows an aggregate estimation of evacuation time of a building. The method can be easily implemented and can be used to give a first evaluation of evacuation procedures without performing evacuation drills and can be used to give a quickly response in identifying critical points on the network. To check the capabilities of the proposed approach a comparison between results obtained from simulations and data recorded from an experimentation on a test site conducted in a primary school located in an Italian town. The adopted methodology can be applied to any building with homogeneous characteristics in terms of activities (i.e. offices, banks, commercials). Experimentation was carried out by the Laboratory for Transport Systems Analysis (LAST) of the University Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria (Italy) under a research project entitled SURE, whose general objective was risk reduction in urban areas in terms of exposure through the definition and implementation of evacuation procedures.