Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Impact of a Change on the Size of the Smoke Compartment in the Evacuation of Health Care Facilities

  • Published:
Fire Technology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Evacuation in health-care facilities is complex due to the physical impairment of the patients. This kind of evacuation usually requires the assistance of the workforce members. A proposed change of NFPA 101, Life Safety Code, would increase the maximum allowable size of a smoke compartment (a space within the building enclosed by smoke barriers on all sides that restricts the movement of smoke) in health-care occupancies from 2090 m2 to 3700 m2, almost double the size. This study aims to analyse the impact of this change in the required time for evacuating patients during a fire in order to understand the consequences of that potential change. This paper is focused on the area where the patient’s rooms are located. The evacuation scenario is a floor plan comprised of four smoke compartments. To analyse the proposed change, the smoke barriers between two adjacent compartments were removed in a floor plan and three ratios of number of patients per one staff member were considered (4:1, 3:1 and 2:1). A computational methodology was conducted to calibrate the model STEPS for simulating assisted evacuation processes. In addition, Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS) was used to simulate the fire and smoke spread in a table and a PC to compare fire and evacuation results The evacuation results show that the change of the smoke compartment size increases the mean evacuation time by 23%; however, the fire results show that the available safe egress time is 16 min for both smaller and large smoke compartment. The ratio of the number of patients per staff member is also a strong factor that increases the evacuation up to 82% when comparing the ratios of 2 patients per staff member and 4 patients per staff member.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Kuligowski ED, Peacock RD, Hoskins BL (2010). A review of building evacuation models, Technical Note 1680, 2nd edn. NIST, Gaithersburg

    Google Scholar 

  2. Castle CJE (2007) Guidelines for assessing pedestrian evacuation software applications Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis University College London, London (paper 115)

  3. Santos G, Aguirre BE (2004) A critical review of emergency evacuation simulation models. In: Proceedings of the NIST workshop on building occupant movement during fire emergencies, Gaithersburg, pp 25–50

  4. Gwynne SMV, Galea ER, Owen M, Lawrence PJ, Filippidis L (1999) Review of modeling methodologies used in the simulation of evacuation. J Build Environ 34:441–749

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Gwynne SMV, Kuligowski ED (2008) Application modes of egress simulation. In: Proceedings of the pedestrian and evacuation dynamics, Wuppertal

  6. Capote JA, Alvear D, Abreu O, Cuesta A, Alonso V (2013) A real-time stochastic evacuation model for road tunnels. Saf Sci 52:73–80

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Capote JA, Alvear D, Abreu A, Cuesta A, Alonso V (2012) A stochastic approach for simulation human behavior during evacuation process in passenger trains. Fire Technol 44(4):911–925

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Bukowski RW, Peacock RD, Jones WW (1998) Sensitivity examination of the air EXODUS aircraft evacuation simulation model. In: Proceedings of the international aircraft fire cabin research conference, Atlantic City, USA, 1998, pp. 16–20

  9. STEPS simulation of transient and pedestrian movements: user manual, unpublished, available with egress model from Mott MacDonald. http://www.mottmac.com

  10. Thunderhead Engineering (2014) Verification and validation—pathfinder 2014.3.1208

  11. Arup (2015) The verification and validation of massmotion for evacuation modeling. http://www.oasys-software.com/media/2015-08-10_MassMotion_Evacuation_V&V_Issue_01a.pdf

  12. Golmohammadi D, Shimshak D (2001) Estimation of the evacuation time in an emergency situation in hospitals. Comput Ind Eng 61:1256–1267

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Johnson C (2005) Using computer simulations to support a risk-based approach for hospital evacuation, Technical Report, University of Glasgow. http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~johnson/papers/G-HES.PDF

  14. MacCallum C et al (2015) An investigation and analysis of pre-movement and evacuation times, procedures and behavior in Irish health sector building. In: Proceedings of 6th conference international symposium human behaviour in fire 2015, September 28–30, 2015 Cambridge, UK

  15. Purser DA (2014) Fire safety and evacuation implications from behaviours and hazard development in two fatal care home incidents. Fire Mater https://doi.org/10.1002/fam.2250.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Burroughs M, Galea ER (2015) Real time, real fire, real response: an analysis of response behavior in housing for vulnerable people. In: Proceedings of 6th conference international symposium human behaviour in fire, September 28–30, 2015 Cambridge, UK

  17. Kuligowsi ED et al (2013) Stair evacuation of older adults and people with mobility impairments. Fire Saf J 62:230–237

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Hunt A, Galea E, Lawrence P (2012) An analysis of the performance of trained staff using movement assist devices to evacuate the non-ambulant. In: Proceedings of human behavior on fire, Cambridge, UK, 2012

  19. Gwynne S et al (2013) The collection of pre-evacuation times from evacuation trials involving a hospital outpatient area and a University library facility. Fire Saf Sci 7:877–888

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Fruin JJ (1971) Service pedestrian planning and design, MAUDEP, Elevator World Educational Services Division, Mobile, Alabama, 1971, reprinted 1987

  21. Averill JD (2010) Five grand challenges in pedestrian and evacuation dynamics. In: Proceedings of the 5th conference on pedestrian and evacuation dynamics, Gaithersburg, 2010

  22. Alvear D, Abreu O, Cuesta A, Alonso V (2014) A new method for assessing the application of deterministic or stochastic approach in evacuation scenarios. Fire Saf J 65:11–18

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Ronchi E, Reneke PA, Peacock RD (2014) A method for the analysis of behavioural uncertainty in evacuation modelling. Fire Technol 50(6):1–27

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Alonso V (2014) Egress modelling in health care occupancies, The Fire Protection Research Foundation, USA, Retrieved July 2014, from http://www.nfpa.org/research/fire-protection-research-foundation/projects-reports-and-proceedings/building-and-life-safety/general-life-safety-issues/egress-modelling-in-health-care-occupancies

  25. McGrattan K, Hostikka S, McDermott R, Floyd J, Weinschenk C, Overholt K (2016) Fire dynamics simulator, technical reference guide, vol 1 mathematical model. NIST Special Publication 1018-1, 6th edn

  26. NUREG 1824 Verification and validation of selected fire models for nuclear power plant applications volume 7: fire dynamics simulator (FDS), USNRC, EPRI, 2007

  27. McGrattan K, McDermott R, Weinschenk C, Hostikka S, Floyd J Fire dynamics simulator user’s guide. NIST Special Publication 1019, 20

  28. Walton WD, Budnick EK (1988) Quick response sprinklers in office configurations: fire test results. U.S. Department of Commerce, NBSIR 88-3695, Virginia

    Book  Google Scholar 

  29. PD 7974-6 (2004) The application of fire safety engineering principles to fire safety design of buildings. Human factors. Life safety strategies. Occupant evacuation, behaviour and condition (Sub-system 6)

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support of The Fire Research Foundation (National Fire Protection association). We appreciate the guidance provided by the Project Technical Panel: Ken Bush (Maryland State Fire Marshal’s Office), Rita Fahy (NFPA), Bob Harmeyers (MSKTD & Associates), Rick Horeis (HDR Architecture, Inc), Enrico Rochi (Lund University), Ron Cole (NFPA Staff Liaison) and Robert Solomon (NFPA Staff Liaison).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Virginia Alonso-Gutierrez

  2. Departamento de Transportes y Tecnología de Proyectos y Procesos, Universidad de Cantabria, Santander, Spain

    Arturo Cuesta, Daniel Alvear & Mariano Lázaro

Authors
  1. Virginia Alonso-Gutierrez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Arturo Cuesta
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Daniel Alvear
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Mariano Lázaro
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Virginia Alonso-Gutierrez.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Alonso-Gutierrez, V., Cuesta, A., Alvear, D. et al. The Impact of a Change on the Size of the Smoke Compartment in the Evacuation of Health Care Facilities. Fire Technol 54, 335–354 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-017-0686-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-017-0686-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation