Evaluating Classroom Evacuation with Crowd Simulation

Sammanfattning: Effective organization of evacuation routes inside rooms needs to be considered when designing the layout. Studies have shown that an ineffective evacuation can in itself be the cause of injuries in emergency situations. This thesis examines how exit configurations and different layouts in classrooms will impact evacuation time using crowd simulation through unilaterally incompressible fluid. The classrooms used in the simulations were modelled after real classrooms at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The different configurations were one exit, two exits, three exits, one exit on the back wall, and a double door on the back wall. These were chosen since previous research have focused on similar layouts. The simulator was used to simulate students evacuating from the different classrooms. The results suggests that which exit configuration is the most optimal is linked to the table layout of the classroom. In the simulated scenarios, two doors always result in faster evacuation time compared to one door. A double door in the back also decreases evacuation time compared to one door. Three doors do not give significant improvements over two doors. Contrary to previous research, there exists no optimal exit configuration that is optimal in all cases.