Evacuation travel paths in virtual reality experiments for tunnel safety analysis
Author
Summary, in English
A case study on the analysis of evacuation travel paths in virtual reality (VR) tunnel fire experiments is presented to increase the understanding on evacuation behaviour. A novel method based on the study of the parametric equations of the occupants’ evacuation travel paths using vector operators inspired by functional analysis theory and the new concept of interaction areas (IAs) is introduced. IAs are presented and calculated in order to represent the distance of an occupant from a reference point (e.g., an emergency exit, the fire source, etc.) over time. The method allows comparisons of travel paths between experimental groups as well as comparisons with reference paths (e.g. user-defined paths, real-world paths, etc.). Results show that a common assumption employed by evacuation models (the use of a hypothetical path based on the shortest distance) may be an over-simplistic approximation of the evacuation paths.
Department/s
Publishing year
2015
Language
English
Pages
257-267
Publication/Series
Fire Safety Journal
Volume
71
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Elsevier
Topic
- Building Technologies
Keywords
- Fire evacuation
- Travel paths
- Tunnel safety
- Virtual reality
- Functional analysis
Status
Published
Research group
- Evacuation
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0379-7112