Citation

Abougharib A, Ndiaye M. Fire Technol. 2022; 58(4): 2123-2142.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10694-022-01244-z

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The hydraulic model is a set of closed-form, deterministic equations used to predict average crowd speeds and movement times of evacuees exiting a building. The standard SFPE hydraulic model assumes that crowd speed is only influenced by crowd congestion and type of terrain, when in fact, it is also affected heavily influenced by smoke, which not only causes evacuees to slow down due to poorer visibility but may also force them to switch a different movement mode: crawling. This paper gathers and refines empirical data from various published experiments involving individuals and groups moving through smoke by walking upright and crawling, to establish two new variants of the hydraulic model describing the movement of crowds through smoke by the two movement modes.

Language: en

Keywords

Congestion; Crawling; Evacuation; Hydraulic model; Smoke; Visibility