A Stochastic Evacuation Model for Fire Life Safety Assessment in Transportation System

This paper presents a stochastic model for emergency evacuation simulation such as for a subway station. The model, MCEVAC was developed using Monte Carlo and a macro-simulation technique; the model includes a number of random variables, such as occupant load, initial occupant load, and pre-evacuation time. A random event of a train fire including fire location, fire growth rate, and the effects of fire smoke, can be used to determine the accessibility of egress paths. As model output, a probability representation of the evacuation time can be obtained by taking into account all or selected random variables. For validation, the calculated exiting time shows agreement with that from a previous station evacuation study. For a hypothetical train fire, the predicted evacuation time consists of likely consequences of the required safe evacuation time in the form of a statistical distribution. While still under development, the model is expected to be used for performance-based fire safety design of transit stations and tunnels.