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 Proceedings: Building Simulation 2007

A NEW COMPOSITE FIRE EVACUATION (CFE) MODEL

BASED ON HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Chen Tao1, 2, Yang Rui1, 2, Sun Zhanhui1, 2, Weng Wenguo1, 2

Email: [email protected]
1
Center for Public Safety Research, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China
2
Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

ABSTRACT The key to guarantee the human safety in building is

that the RSET must be smaller than the Available
Occupant evacuation dynamics is a kind of many- Safe Egress Time (ASET, viz. the time period from
body system of strongly interacting persons. A great fire breaking out to endangering human safety). The
deal of factors should be taken into account in the universal criterion of safe evacuation time-line is
study of fire evacuation, such as human behavior, fire shown in Figure 1.
products and architecture. To describe human
behavior, there are two different evacuation models,
the social force model and the lattice-gas model. Available Safe Egress Time (ASET)

Considering the impact of fire product upon people's Required Safe Egress Time (RSET)
physiology and psychology, the CFE (Composite
pre-movement time moving time
Fire Evacuation) model is presented in this paper, alarm time

which includes three sub models: lattice-gas model,

social force model and pre-movement time model. detect alarm finish evacuating building limitation

And a direction potential field concept is introduced Figure 1 Universal criterion of safe evacuation time-line
in the CFE model to solve the moving directionality
of people. In the end, the fire case of Yiyuan dancing
hall in Fuxin is simulated by the CFE model and the The RSET means the time period from the moment
lattice-gas model based on the human characteristics of fire breaking out to the moment that all the people
of China. reach the safe area. The RSET includes the detecting
and alarm time talarm, the pre-movement time tpre and
KEYWORDS the movement time tmove, where the tpre consist of the
recognition time treg and the response time tresp,
Evacuation Model, Fire, Human Behavior, Case expressed as Eq. (1).
Study
RSET = talarm + t pre + tmove = talarm + (treg + tresp ) + tmove (1)
INTRODUCTION
The talarm can be estimated by the smoke spreading
In recent years, the study of performance-based fire simulation and the characteristic of detection system,
protection design and fire risk assessment develops the tpre is generally acquired from statistics, and the
rapidly in the world and it has been one of key issues tmove can be predicted by the simple empirical formula
in the research field of fire safety. One of the most or the evacuation model which mainly depends on
important goals of these researches is to ensure the crowd density, walking speed, width of exits, etc.
safety of life. To realize the rational and optimal fire
protection design, proper calculation of the Required CFE MODEL
Safe Egress Time (RSET) is required.
According to the representation methods of the
It is thought that evacuation and fire development go enclosure (Gwynne et al. 1999), models can roughly
irreversibly and synchronously along the same time- be classified as coarse network models, fine net
line. The fire development can be divided into models or continuity models. In the coarse network
several periods, such as breaking out, fire increasing, model, each node may represent a room or corridor
stable burning, fire decay and fire extinguishing. For irrespective of its physical size. Nodes are connected
human safety, the first two periods should be cared by arcs representing actual connectivity (such as door,
about mainly. Generally, an evacuation will go exit) within the structure. This model presents
through the stages of perceiving a fire, preparing, difficulties when incorporating local movement and
evacuating, reaching safe place, etc. During the navigation including overtaking, the resolution of
evacuation, there are two significant moments, the local conflicts, and obstacle avoidance. Using the
fire detecting time and the time of fire endangering fine net approach the entire floor space of the
human safety. enclosure is usually covered in a collection of tiles or

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 Proceedings: Building Simulation 2007

nodes. It can show geometry form of the floor space, each grid of the lattice is set as 0.5m×0.5m. The grid
position of the inside barrier and people’s accurate area is 0.25m2 which is sufficient to contain one
position, but it is difficult to simulate the crowded person.
situation. Based on the systematic frame of multi-
Table 1 Mean values of Chinese adult's height,
particles and self-driven, the continuity model (also
weight and shoulder width
called social force model) uses mechanics equations
to simulate crowd dynamics. The individual has the Age bracket 18-20 21-25 26-30 31-35 36-40
ability of independent movement and making a Height M 169.9 170.2 170.1 169.8 169.6
response to surrounding environment in this model. (cm) F 158.8 159.2 159.4 159.0 158.9
This simulation can subtly realize pushing, panic and Weight M 59.2 61.2 63.2 64.6 65.7
visual range (Helbing et al. 2000) at great cost of (kg) F 51.1 51.3 53.5 54.9 56.5
computing time, which will result in low Shoulder M 42.5 42.6 42.5 42.5 42.4
computational efficiency. width (cm) F 39.7 39.8 39.9 39.8 39.7
Based on the human behavior characteristic of people Age bracket 41-45 46-50 51-55 56-60
in China, CFE (Composite Fire Evacuation) model Height M 168.9 167.8 167.8 167.6
has been described in this paper, which includes three (cm) F 158.2 157.7 157.4
sub models: lattice-gas model, social force model and Weight M 66.2 66.0 66.2 66.3
pre-movement time model. The impact of fire (kg) F 58.1 58.8 58.5
products upon people's physiology and psychology Shoulder M 42.2 42.0 42.0 41.9
has also been considered in this model. The CFE width (cm) F 39.6 39.4 39.4
model comprehends the advantage of the lattice-gas
model which is high computational efficiency, and
the social force model, which is fine simulation of Except for certain quality and body size, a human
crowd dynamics. It adopts the lattice-gas approach in individual is a special particle with ideology.
low crowd density areas and uses the social force Especially in fire emergency, people’s actions have
model to simulate the panic and crowded behavior in obvious directionality, viz. fleeing from the
high crowd density areas. hazardous area and evacuating to the safe zone or
outdoors. The traditional collision rule based on
Lattice-gas sub-model momentum conservation can not describe people’s
action characteristics accurately. To solve the moving
Traditional lattice-gas model is a kind of discrete directionality of people, the lattice-gas model in this
non-linear kinetics system based on the fluid paper introduces a direction potential field concept. It
molecular kinetic theory (Li et al. 1994), and it is the means that each lattice has a direction potential. The
embodiment and application of cellular automaton in individual in the CFE model will move from the
statistical physics and fluid mechanics. In a lattice with higher potential to that with lower
microscopic scale, the model describes a large potential.
number of particles with the same quality moving
and interacting in the regular discrete nets following The direction potential field can not only express the
a certain collision rule, and it will simulate the relative distance to the exit but also reflect familiar
complicated physical phenomenon in the degree of evacuee to the structure of the building, the
macroscopic scale. In a word, it is a physical model escape route and the safety exit. It can even show the
with discrete time, space and target. trend of far away from dangerous area. Figure 2
gives a demonstration of net dividing and direction
Each human individual have a certain body size potential field initializing for the 5m×5m square
which can be expressed by the area of people’s room with two exits. Figure 2(a) is the sketch map of
horizontal projection. In this model, the size of lattice net dividing, position of exits and fire point. In
is fixed through the area of people’s horizontal Figure 2(b), only relative distance to the exit is
projection and the statistics value of shoulder width. considered in the direction potential field. The
It is indicated that the average area of pedestrian direction tendencies of exit 1 and 2 are set as 0, and
horizontal projection is 0.113m2 in Russia the highest direction potential is 9 in this room.
(Predtechenskii et al. 1971), 0.1458-0.1862m2 in Figure 2(c) shows different familiar degree of
Austria (Kendik 1985) and 0.12-0.19m2 in Germany evacuee to different exits, which results in the change
(Schneider 2001). According to "Chinese adult's of direction potential field. Here, the direction
physique determines standard", the statistical potential of exit 1 is 0 and that of exit 2 is 5, which
averages of adult's height and weight are shown in means exit 1 is in common use. And the highest
Table 1 (Yu 1997). About the proportionate value of direction potential has changed into 11. The
relationship of the human body, it is indicated that influence of fire region is expressed by Figure 2(d).
the shoulder width is 1/4 of the height. So, the The direction potential of fire region in the CFE
average shoulder width of Chinese can be calculated, model is usually set as the highest value, which
shown in Table 1. According to the above statement,

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 Proceedings: Building Simulation 2007

represents the tendency of keeping away from Pre-movement time sub-model

hazardous area. In the pre-movement time sub model, a Gaussian
distribution function is used to describe the pre-
10 Exit1 10
movement time tpre (Jia et al. 2002), expressed by
9 9 10.00
1 (t pre − t pre , μ ) 2 (4).
8 Fire 8
9.000
f = exp[− ]
7 region 7
8.000

7.000
2π t pre ,σ 2t pre ,σ 2
6.000
6 6

Y Axis Title
The five main factors which influence tpre,μ (standard
5.000
5 5 4.000

pre-movement time) are: people’s state, building

4 4 3.000

2.000
3 3

characteristic, present position of people, fire

1.000

2 2 0

1
Exit2 1
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
intensity, fire detecting and warning facility. The
calculation formula of tpre,μ is
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
(a) (b)
10 10

9 9
(5),
12.00 12.00

8
11.00
10.00 8
11.00
10.00
t pre , μ = t pre b(a + c + d + e)
9.000 9.000
7 7
8.000 8.000

6 7.000
6.000
6 7.000
6.000 where t pre and tpre,σ are mean value and mean
5 5.000 5 5.000

variance of tpre,μ.
4.000 4.000
4 4 3.000
3.000
2.000
3 2.000
3
1.000
1.000
2 0 2
0
The five factors can be expressed by dimensionless
parameters a, b, c, d and e separately, whose values
1 1
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
(c) (d)
are shown in Table 2.
Figure 2 Net dividing and direction potential field Table 2 Values of dimensionless parameters in pre-
initializing in the 5m×5m square room movement time sub-model
Social force sub-model Dimensionless
Characteristic and Value
Parameter
During fire emergency, people's behavior is generally People's Waking Resting Sleeping
complicated and unordered. But given relatively a
state 1 1.2 1.5
simple and loose environment, people’s behavior can Market or Office or House or
be described by probability, which lead to the Hotel or Hospital or
Building amusement Factory School
b Apartment Sanatorium
development of gas-kinetic model (Helbing 1992). characteristic place building dormitory
Lewin has proposed another method to simulate 0.5 1.0 1.2~1.5 1.6~1.8 ≈2.0
people's behavior (Lewin 1992). It is thought that the c
Position of
The number of rooms to the fire room / 10
behavior should be changed by the influence of people
"social force". According to the concept of social large middle small
d Fire intensity
force, Helbing, et al. have proposed a dynamics -0.1 0 0.1
model to describe people’s psychology and crowded Pronunciatio Alarm bell
Fire detecting Recording
n None
behavior (Helbing et al. 2000). In this model, the e and warning alarm Accurate Inaccurate
broadcasting
behaviour in a crowd will be influenced by two facility
-0.2 -0.1 -0.1 0.2 0.1
different forces, socio-psychological and physical
force.
It is supposed that individual i, who is in dangerous CASE STUDY
area at a certain moment t, expects to evacuate to the Since 1991 in China, the twelve extraordinarily
v
safe area with speed vi0 (t ) and direction ei0 (t ) . His serious fire tragedies have caused about 1,552 deaths,
social psychology force can be described by Eq. (2), each of which devitalized more than 50 people's lives.
v
where vi (t ) means the actual speed, mi is the weight Among them, the fire of Yiyuan dancing hall in
and τi is the characteristic acceleration time to Fuxin resulted in 233 deaths. Taking this fire as an
describe his accelerating ability. example, FDS is used to simulate the fire scene and
v v to calculate and confirm ASET, and RSET is
v v 0 (t )ei0 (t ) − vi (t ) (2)
fi 0 (t ) = mi i calculated by the CFE model. The number of death
τi
can be calculated by comparing of ASET and RSET.
v
The physics environment force v includes f ij (the
Fire scene
force among people) and fiw (the force between
people and barrier). The kinetic equation to describe The fire accident of Yiyuan dancing hall in Fuxin
evacuating velocity in the social force sub-model can took place at 13:30 on November 27, 1994. There
be expressed as: were 304 people in the dance hall when the fire broke
v v v out. It caused 233 deaths, 133 men and 100 women.
dvi v 0 (t )ei0 (t ) − vi (t ) v v
(3).
mi = mi i + ∑ f ij + ∑ f iw Four people were severely injured and sixteen people
dt τi j ≠i w
were slightly injured. Among the 231 deceased

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 Proceedings: Building Simulation 2007

whose identities were verified, there were 84 workers, fire in this paper is relatively conservative. Figure 4
75 students and 61 job-waiting youth. According to shows the calculation result of FDS at 6 minutes after
the statistic, most of the deceased were young people, the start of the fire: the value of temperature and CO
61 people between 14 and 17 years old and 159 density distribution map at the horizontal height of
people between 18 and 25 years old (Anno., Anno. 1.6m, which is the height from the floor to the mouth
A). of person of average length.

Box Box Box Box Box Box

Street of north
Front
Sofa corridor
Courtyard outside the south

0.8m
North gate
1.8m
13m

2m
Dance hall

3m
South gate

North

18m

Figure 3 The plan sketch of Yiyuan dancing hall in Fuxin

(a) Temperature (℃)
The area of Yiyuan dancing hall is 280m2. Figure 3
shows the Yiyuan dancing hall. The hall is 18 meters
long, 13 meters wide and 5 meters high, with six
boxes in the west which are 2.76 meters long, 2
meters wide and 2.4 meters high. The width of the
boxes’ doors is 0.8m, and the north gate is 0.8m, the
south gate is 1.8m (unfortunately, the south gate was
closed during the fire). All the exits are 2 meters high.
The building wall is fitted with the woven Dacron
and cotton with both upper and lower ends nailing
and pigeonholing. The top of the building is
decorated by wooden-ply board. There are 56 sofas
against the wall with synthetic leather as surface
material and polyurethane as filling.
(b) CO density (ppm)
ASET calculated by FDS
Figure 4 Temperature and CO density distribution map at
To simulate the ventilation effect of the window
1.6m height (240s)
break in FDS model, 6 vents with 0.08m2 area are set
up evenly in both sides of the hall, which are 2.0m
height to the floor. According to the experiment It is supposed in this paper that the temperature
database of NIST (National Institute of Standard & higher than 80℃ or the concentration of CO more
Technology), U.S.A., the largest fire power of one than 800ppm will cause injury to the human body.
armchair is 2.25MW (Anno. B). It is supposed that The simulation results of FDS show that the average
the fire taking place in the dance hall is αt2fire with temperature at the horizontal height of 1.6m will be
0.046889kW/s2 of fire growth rate and there are higher than 80℃ in about 220s, and CO density will
always two sofas burning steadily in the largest fire reach 800ppm in about 280s. Thus, ASET is
power at any moment of spreading course after the confirmed as 220s by the simulation of FDS.
fire is steady. Then, in the simulation of FDS, the
area of fire is set as 2m2 to satisfy the horizontal area Evacuation simulation and analysis
of two armchairs. The fire material was adopted
It is described by Helbing et al. (2000) that the
polyurethane, and the power of fire after burning
influence radius among human individual is 5m in
steadily is 2.25MW/m2. It can be found from the
the social force model. Consider that the high crowd
hypothesis that the fire source in FDS doesn’t include
density area generally appears near the bottleneck
the woven Dacron and cotton hanging on the wall.
such as the exit and stair (Chen et al. 2003), in this
Since the burning rate of these chemical upholstery
case study, the social force sub-model is used to
fabrics is very fast, it is considered that the supposed
describe the panic and crowded behavior within 5m

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 Proceedings: Building Simulation 2007

range near the north door and the lattice-gas sub- warning facilities, and the fire is assumed to be large.
model will simulate evacuation in other low density According to Table 2, the value of the dimensionless
areas. parameter a, b, d and e is 1, 0.5, -0.1, 0.1 respectively.
The value of c is calculated based on the topological
In the simulating of the CFE model, people’s weight,
structure of building. Thus, the pre-movement time
shoulder width and speed are all regarded as normal
of people in this building is calculated by the pre-
distribution. According to the statistical information
movement time sub-model. Figure 5(a) presents pre-
about the people in the dancing hall and the data of
movement time of different persons, and Figure 5(b)
Table 1, the choice of people’s parameters in the CFE
is the distribution of pre-movement time, which is a
model is selected as described in Table 3.
normal distribution. From Figure 5, the biggest and
Table 3 People's parameters in the CFE model smallest pre-movement time are 170s and 85s.
SEX M F Based on the parameter selection, the simulatiom
Number 174 130 result of the CFE model is presented by the solid line
Mean 60 51 in Figure 6. For comparison, the analog result is also
Weight (kg)
Variance 1 1 obtained by the simple lattice-gas model, which is
Mean 47.5 44.7 expressed by dotted line in Figure 6. It is shown that
Shoulder Width
(cm) 3 3
the evacuation efficiency calculated by the CFE
Variance
model is relatively low. It is probably contributes to
Normal 1.0 1.0
this model’s ability of describing the phenomena of
Speed (m/s) Expect 5.0 4.0
pushing and shoving among individuals near the
Variance 0.2 0.2
north gate, which reflects that people are eager to
Pre-movement t pre 240 evacuate to the safe area during a fire.
time(s)
tpre,σ 10 350
CFE model
ASET Lattice-Gas model
300
170
Number of people not evacuated

160 250

150
200
Pre-movement time (s)

140
150
130

120 100

110
50
100
0
90 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550

80
RSET(s)
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350
No. of personnel Figure 6 The simulation result of evacuating from north
gate during fire
(a) Pre-movement time of different person
80
Regarding 220s as dangerous moment which is the
ASET calculated by the simulation of FDS, 162
70
persons will die from the simulation of simple lattice-
60 gas model and the number of death will be 197 from
the CFE model. It seems that the simulation result of
Number of people

50

40
the CFE model is closer to the real case situation.
One of the most probable reason is the difference in
30
simulation ability about crowd situations of these two
20 kinds of models. The ability of the simple lattice-gas
10
model to describe the interacting among individual is
not strong enough to simulate the evacuating
0
70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 situation in the high crowd density area accurately,
Pre-movement time(s) especially in case where the exit is small and
congestion is likely to occur.
(b) Distribution
The number of 197 deaths in accident of Yiyuan
Figure 5 Pre-movement time calculated by pre-movement
dancing hall simulated by the CFE model is smaller
time sub-model
than the real death number of 233. The authors
The dancing hall is a public place of entertainment consider that it is mainly due to the neglect of the
for people who are awake without fire detecting and chemical fiber cloth decorating to the wall in the

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 Proceedings: Building Simulation 2007

assumption of the fire scene. Thus, the fire situation methodologies used in evacuation modeling”,
calculated in FDS simulation is not as dangerous as Fire & Materials. 23: 383-388.
the actual conditions. The neglect leads to the
deviation of ASET and influences the simulation Helbing D. 1992. “A fluid-dynamic model for the
result of people’s death finally. movement of pedestrians”, Complex Systems 6:
391-415.
CONCLUSION Helbing D., Farkas I., Vicsek T. 2000. “Simulating
The CFE model is built based on the analysis of dynamical features of escape panic”, Nature. 407:
Chinese people’s behavior characteristic, which 487-490.
includes three sub models: lattice-gas model, social Jia C.Q., Liu C., Xiang T.H., Zeng D.L. 2002. “The
force model and pre-movement time model. The Study of Evacuation Start Time in Fires”, Fire
impact of fire products upon people’s physiology and Safety Science (In Chinese) 11(3): 176-179.
psychology has been considered in this model.
Evacuation during fire can be simulated by the CFE Kendik E. 1985. SFPE Technology Report 85.4:
model, and the result can predict RSET. With the “Assessment of Escape Routes in Buildings and
help of FDS model to calculate ASET, it is possible a Design Method for Calculating Pedestrian
to perform risk assessment or analyze the fire case Movement”, Society of Fire Protection
for the certain building or environment. Engineers. Boston, Massachusetts.
After the simulation and analysis of the CFE model Lewin K., 1992. “Field Theory in Social Science”,
and simple lattice-gas model, it seems that the Harper, New York.
simulation result of the CFE model is closer to the
Li Y.X., Kang L.S., Chen Y.P. 1994. “Lattice-Gas
real case situation. The reason is that the CFE model
can simulate the condition of pushing and shoving Automaton”, Tsinghua University Press,
among individual accurately. This condition reflects Guangxi Science and Technology Press (In
the psychology that people in a fire are eager to Chinese).
evacuate to the safe area as quickly as possible, and it Predtechenskii V.M., Milinskii A.I. 1971. “Planning
usually causes congestion near the exit and reduces for Foot Traffic Flow in Buildings”, Amerind
the efficiency of evacuating, which is described as Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi.
the ‘fast-is-slow effect’ by Helbing (2000).
Schneider V., 2001. “Application of the individual-
In the future, video material on escape panics will be based evacuation model ASERI in designing
used to validate the CFE model. The authors are now safety concepts”, in: Proceedings of 2nd
studying the impact of CO and high-temperature of International Symposium on Human Behavior in
fire exhaust gases on people, the interpersonal Fire, March, Boston, USA, , 41-51.
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acoustic information exchange, etc. Yu D.Z., 1997. “Report on the investigation and
research of the physique of Chinese staff
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT and Technology (In Chinese) 16(4): 6-13.
The authors appreciate the project 70503017
supported by NSFC and the project
212006BAK01A02 support by MOST.

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