Abstract
To date, there are various types of elevators, such as evacuation elevators, that are being utilized during high-rise building evacuations in several countries, in accordance with their respective building codes. In order to enhance the effectiveness of elevator evacuation, evacuees’ behaviors should be better understood, in this way taking human behavior into consideration will allow for elevators to be better utilized. However, there are few studies on this topic since nearly no elevator evacuation events or experiments have been previously recorded. In this paper, 64 experiments were carried out to study how evacuees behave and what factors influence their behaviors during evacuation. Several key data, such as elevator loading and unloading time, time to open and close elevator doors were collected. We found that loading time (6.0 s) is much shorter than the time to open and close the doors (15.4 s). According to our findings, the number of evacuees influences evacuees’ behaviors when using elevators, but smoke does not. Furthermore, the shapes of queuing, such as arch and line, will influence the duration of time for evacuees going through elevator doors. The evacuees in the arch shape (5.3 s) pass faster than those in the line shape (6.4 s). Several interesting phenomena were observed in our experiments, such as push, hesitation, re-entering the elevator, stair-preference, and social bonding. Finally, several suggestions, such as the width of doors and the design of elevator lobbies, are proposed to building designers on the issues mentioned above. The basic data of our experiments can be used to calibrate and validate elevator evacuation simulations.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bukowski RW, Jensen R (2012) Addressing the needs of people using elevators for emergency evacuation. Fire Technol 48:127–136. doi:10.1007/s10694-010-0180-y
Proulx G, Johnson P, Heyes E, Hedman G, Averill J, Pauls J, McColl D (2009) The use of elevators for egress: Discussion Panel. In: Proceedings of human behaviour in Fire conference, pp 97–110.
Groner N (2002) A compelling case for emergency elevator systems. Fire Eng 155(10):126–128
Averill J, Mileti D, Peacock R, Kuligowski E, Groner N, Proulx G, Reneke P, Nelson H (2005) Federal building and fire safety investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster—Occupant Behavior, Egress and Emergency Communications. US Government Printing Office, Washington, NIST NCSTAR. pp 1–7.
Howkins R (2000) In the event of fire—use elevators. In: Proceedings of ELEVCON 2000, Elevator Technology, vol 10, pp 11–21.
Proulx G, Pineau J, Latour JC, Stewart L (1995) Study of the occupants’ behaviour during the 2 forest laneway fire in North York, Ontario.
Blake S, Galea E, Westeng H, et al (2004) An analysis of human behaviour during the WTC disaster of 11 September 2001 based on published survivor accounts. In: Proceedings of the 3rd international symposium on human behaviour in fire, vol 1, p 3.
Yuan Q, Weng W (2012) Study of behavior in high-rise building fire evacuation based on survivors’ survey (in Chinese). China Saf Sci J 22(10):41–46.
ICC—International Code Council (2009) International Building Code
NFPA (2009) NFPA 5000: Building Construction and Safety Code, Technical report. National Fire Protection Association, Quincy
NFPA (2012) NFPA 101 Life Safety Code. National Fire Protection Association, Quincy
British Standards Institute (2008) BS 9999: Code of practice for fire safety in the design, management and use of buildings
CIBSE—Chartered Institute of Building Service Engineers (2000) Guide D: Transportation systems in buildings, Technical report.
Hsiung KH, Wen WJ, Chien SW, et al. (2006) A research of the elevator evacuation performance for Taipei 101 Financial Center. In: Proceedings of 6th international conference on performance-based codes and fire safety design methods
Barker F (1995) Multi-purpose elevators for persons with disabilities and firefighters in new high-rise office buildings in the US. (with concepts for accessibility and other buildings and locations). In: The 2nd symposium on elevators, fire, and accessibility, Baltimore, Maryland
Chien S, Wen W (2011) A research of the elevator evacuation performance and strategies for Taipei 101 Financial Center. J Disaster Res 6:6.
Klote JH (2011) ASHRAE transactions. 2011, vol 117 Issue 1, pp 478–485. 8p. 1 Illustration.
Bukowski RW (2005) Protected elevators for egress and access during fires. In: Tall buildings, workshop on building occupant movement during fire emergencies. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Special Publications, pp 14–21
Bukowski RW (2010) International applications of elevators for fire service access and occupant egress in fires. Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) J 3:28–33.
Bukowski RW (2010b) Applications of elevators for occupant egress in fires. In: Proceedings of the SFPE technology conference 2010. Society of Fire Protection Engineers, New Orleans
Weismantle P, Smith G, Sheriff M (2007) An architectural technical design case study. Struct Design Tall Spec Build 16:335–360
Kinsey MJ (2011) Vertical transport evacuation modelling. Thesis of University of Greenwich, London
Heyes E (2009a) Human behavior considerations in the use of lifts for evacuation from high rise commercial buildings. Thesis of University of Canterbury, Christchurch
Kinsey MJ, Galea ER, Lawrence PJ (2010) Human factors associated with the selection of lifts/elevators or stairs in emergency and normal usage conditions. Fire Technol 48(1):3–26. doi:10.1007/s10694-010-0176-7
Liao YJ, Liao GX, Lo SM, Ma J, Liu SB (2014) A study on people’s attitude to the use of elevators for fire escape. Fire Technol 50:363–378. doi:10.1007/s10694-012-0300-y
Heyes E, Spearpoint M (2009b) Lifts for evacuation—human behavior considerations. In: Proceedings of the human behavior in fire conference, pp. 73–84
Kinsey MJ, Galea ER, Lawrence PJ (2009) Investigating the use of elevators for high-rise building evacuation through computer simulation. In: Proceedings of the human behavior in fire conference, pp 85–96
Lee D, Park J, Kim H (2004) A study on experiment of human behavior for evacuation simulation. Ocean Eng 31(8–9):931–941.
Ronchi E, Nilsson D (2013) Fire evacuation in high-rise buildings: a review of human behavior and modelling research. Fire Sci Rev 2(7):1–21
Chow WK (1998) Numerical studies on recent large high-rise building fire. J Archit Eng 4(2):65–74.
Jeon G, Kim J, Hong W, Augenbroe G (2005) Simulation of the kin behavior in building occupant evacuation based on Cellular Automaton. Build Environ 40(3):411–415
Kobes M, Helsloot I, Vries B, Post J, Oberijé N, Groenewegen K (2010) Way finding during fire evacuation; an analysis of unannounced fire drills in a hotel at night. Build Environ 45(3):537–548
Ding N, Chen T, Luh PB, Zhang H (2014) Optimization of elevator evacuation considering potential over-crowding. In: 11th World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation (WCICA), Shenyang, pp 2664–2668
Fruin J (1971) Pedestrian planning and design. Metropolitan Association of Urban Designers & Environmental Planners, New York
Acknowledgments
This work was partially supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program No. 2012CB719705), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 91224008, 91024032), Tsinghua-UTC Research Institute for Integrated Building Energy, Safety and Control Systems, and the United Technologies Research Center. The authors appreciate support for this paper by the Collaborative Innovation Center of Public Safety.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ding, N., Chen, T. & Zhang, H. Experimental Study of Elevator Loading and Unloading Time During Evacuation in High-Rise Buildings. Fire Technol 53, 29–42 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-016-0597-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-016-0597-z