Validation of the buildingEXODUS evacuation model for highrise construction sites

Описание: This video describes one of the outputs from the IOSH funded Fire Safety Engineering Group (University of Greenwich) project 'Construction Site Evacuation Safety'. A detailed summary of the project can be found on Prof Galea's LINKEDIN page [1].

Evacuation of high-rise construction sites is one of the most challenging evacuation scenarios conceivable. Over the past 50 years, very little evacuation research has focused on issues uniquely associated with high-rise construction sites. To address this, FSEG, in collaboration with IOSH and Multiplex, undertook a three-year project to develop an evidence base describing evacuation performance of high-rise construction site workers.

The overall aim of the project was to improve the safety of construction site workers during on-site emergency evacuation, through the development of a unique evidence base characterising, for the first time, the actual performance and behaviour of construction workers during emergency evacuation. Combining this information with computer simulation will inform the development of more reliable evacuation procedures, improving the work environment through better preparation for, and management of, on-site emergency evacuation, and advancing the safety of construction workers.

While evacuation simulation tools can be used to develop, adapt and evaluate evacuation procedures for high-rise construction sites, for simulation models to be meaningful, they must be based on a reliable evidence base describing the performance and behaviour of construction workers during emergency evacuation situations. This data is essential to calibrate evacuation models thereby enabling them to be used for construction site applications. Furthermore, to improve the confidence in applying evacuation models to construction site applications, it is essential to have a reliable validation data-set representative of construction sites. Thus, this was one of the six main objectives of the project and the basis for this presentation.

A complete report describing this work and the data was published by IOSH in September 2019 and is freely available on their website [2].
The focus of this presentation is on the High-Rise Construction Site Validation Data-Set (HRCSVDS), based on one of the four full-scale trials, the metric developed to assess model performance and demonstrate its application to the buildingEXODUS software. All data required to define the HRCSVDS and tools to undertake the assessment are freely available on the FSEG web site [3].

The validation data-set takes into consideration the impact of unique aspects of high-rise construction sites such as temporary floor surfaces, temporary scaffold stairs, ladders, the response of workers to the alarm and the two different physical environments associated with the main part of the building and the formworks.

The validation analysis demonstrates that it is possible to predict the evacuation performance of high-rise construction sites with a reasonable level of accuracy using the adapted buildingEXODUS software. Using the validated software it is hoped that the safety of high-rise construction site workers will be enhanced through the development of more appropriate evacuation procedures. Full details can be found either in the report [2] or the journal paper [4].

[1]   / construction-site-evacuation-safety-strate...  

[2] https://iosh.com/constructionevacuation

[3] http://fseg.gre.ac.uk/validation/buil...

[4] Deere, S., Xie, H., Galea E.R., Cooney, D and Lawrence P.J. An Evacuation Model Validation Data-Set for High-Rise Construction Sites, Fire Safety Journal, May 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.202...