Abstract
One way to avoid the loss of life in building fires is by performing effective evacuation. As a consequence of economic developments, cities of the world continuously build high-rise buildings, including super high-rise ones having more than 40 storeys. When a building has to perform full evacuation, the long travel distance in a super high-rise building can cause delay to reach exit discharge locations on the ground floor. Although a number of studies have been carried out to identify the characteristics of evacuee during emergency, it is suggested that the evacuation behaviour may be affected by cultural background of the persons (Özkaya A 2001) [1]. This paper is intended to gather building evacuation time, vertical movement speed data and to study the behaviour of occupants during evacuation in medium- and high-rise buildings. The study was carried out mostly in Jakarta, Indonesia. The evacuation time and overall movement speed were observed by gathering the data during a typical evacuation drill in the medium- and high-rise buildings. The result suggested that vertical movement speed descending from the fourth floor is around 0.70–0.81 m/s. As the evacuee is descending from the higher floors, the lower movement speed was identified, e.g. around 0.62–0.75 m/s for those descending from the ninth floor and around 0.50–0.73 m/s for those descending from 19th floor. The trends are in good agreement with other works suggested in the literature. From the surveys, regardless of the occupancy, i.e. whether the building is an office, a college or shopping avenue, interesting behaviours of the evacuee during evacuation process were identified. While travelling downwards, evacuees tend to evacuate in groups, to walk side by side with other members of the groups, and some of them hold the stairs’ railing. These caused queuing and congestion, especially if the exit stairs’ width only fit two people walking side by side.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Pemerintah DKI Jakarta, Indonesia, and Dinas Penanggulangan Kebakaran dan Penyelamatan for providing scholarships as well as their support during the data collection and discussion.
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Leonita, F., Sakti, H., Nugroho, Y.S. (2017). Study of the Occupant Characteristics During Evacuation in Medium- and High-Rise Buildings in Indonesia. In: Harada, K., Matsuyama, K., Himoto, K., Nakamura, Y., Wakatsuki, K. (eds) Fire Science and Technology 2015. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0376-9_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0376-9_12
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