Verification Testing of Evacuationz, a Coarse Network Evacuation Model

Sammanfattning: Several evacuation models exist in the market. It is an issue for both the user and developer to evaluate the ease of use and the quality of the model results. Verification is the process of determining that the results of a calculation method match with the developer's conceptual modelling representation expectations, i.e., the modelling implementation is accurate. Different testing procedures are available for the verification of evacuation models/simulators. Recently, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) released ISO:20414, a standard procedure including a detailed list of verification tests. It includes testing of 4 components – Basic components, Behavioural components, Fire-people interaction Components, and Building-specific Components. This thesis focuses on applying the verification tests included in ISO:20414 to the fire evacuation model Evacuationz. This software is a coarse network model using pseudo-random sampling from distributions and it can be used in the context of fire risk assessment. The scope of this work is dual, namely 1) to perform a systematic verification of the Evacuationz model using ISO:20414, 2) to evaluate the applicability of ISO:20414 to coarse network models, being this the first time, this testing procedure document is applied for such type of models. In this thesis, a total of 21 verification tests of ISO standard are considered. Nevertheless, 16 verification tests were successfully conducted and achieved desirable results. The majority of the tests were performed explicitly, but movement around a corner was performed implicitly because corners cannot be represented directly in coarse network models. Since the version under consideration of the software does not support horizontal counterflows, one test did not yield the expected result. Also, four tests could not be conducted because of the software limitations, i.e., features such as disabling exits, showing occupant incapacitation using FED, or the inclusion of modern building evacuation features such as Lifts and Escalators were not present in the version of the software in use. Overall, it can be concluded that the ISO:20414 procedure concerning verification testing is considered applicable to coarse network models.