On performance measures for evacuation systems

How can a large, complex building with many occupants be evacuated safely? Before this question can be addressed it is necessary to define what ‘safely’ means, and to define some relevant measures which can be used to characterize the safety level. This paper studies different performance measures for evacuation systems. The primary measures are related to accident effects, e.g. the expected number of fatalities, and to evacuation time, e.g. the expected time needed to evacuate k persons out of the building. The paper presents a model of the evacuation system and shows how queueing network theory and simulation methods can be used to calculate the performance measures. The paper includes an example and a brief description of a real case study.