The Impact of Elevator Usage and Zoning on High-Rise Building Evacuation

Sammanfattning: For decades, the use of elevators has been prohibited during emergencies but with the ever-increasing heights of the buildings, safe and timely vertical evacuation by the conventional means of stairs seems more and more of a challenge. With the recent push for a better understanding of the pros and cons of use of elevators for evacuation by various concerned parties, it is imperative that there is a better understanding of the performance, advantages and risks involved with this evacuation strategy. This thesis aims to shed some light on the impact of the number of available elevators, number of occupants using the elevators and the maximum waiting time for elevators on the overall performance and application of the elevators for evacuation in high-rise buildings. This thesis was undertaken to analyze the impact of elevator usage variables and zoning on the use of Occupant Evacuation Elevators in high-rise buildings. The study was conducted on a hypothetical high-rise building comprising of 37 floors with a total of 25 elevators considered as the base scenario. Based on the number of available elevators, number of elevator users and the maximum waiting time for the use of the elevators; seven scenarios were short-listed and study of each scenario was carried out in the Pathfinder evacuation model using the hydraulic model (SFPE method by Gwynne & Rosenbaum) to simulate agent movement. The simulations were performed by making assumptions regarding possible behaviors of the occupants during emergencies to enable quantitative representation of the chosen scenarios. Results refer to the analysis of total evacuation times. The quickest evacuation times were obtained when a higher number of occupants were willing to use to elevators without re-routing to using stairs for evacuation. The study also suggests that the effectiveness of the use of elevators for evacuation significantly decreases when there is an uneven distribution of the elevator zoning.