A Refined Concept on Emergency Evacuation by Lifts

A refined concept on emergency total evacuation by lifts has been proposed in this paper. The proposed evacuation strategy consists of combining stair evacuation from a group of occupied floors to a refuge floor followed by lift evacuation from the refuge floor to street level. The provisions of lift shaft pressurization or water entry protection in lift shaft can be eliminated since shuttle lifts with blind shafts without any openings on typical floors are used as the evacuation lift. The possible risk of fire and smoke affecting the occupants waiting in the lift lobbies can be solved completely since the lift pick up floors are located on the refuge floor levels, which are designed to be a temporary place of safety for occupants’ refuge. This refined emergency lift evacuation strategy has been studied in a proposed super-high rise building. The traditional total building evacuation using stairs and the proposed alternative evacuation strategy have been simulated using a 3-D evacuation software STEPS to demonstrate the evacuation efficiency. The results show that the total building evacuation time can be shortened significantly by adopting the refined concept, and such concept can be put into practical usage without significant violation to existing conventional stair evacuation strategy and without additional investment in evacuation safety provisions.

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