Sensitivity Examination of the airEXODUS1 Aircraft Evacuation Simulation Model

Objective The Building and Fire Research Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been a leader in the development, application and evaluation of models for the simulation of fires and the associated hazards and risk to people. NIST’s expertise is useful in the broader application of fire hazard analysis to transportation systems in general. Such a project related to passenger trains has been ongoing for several years, sponsored by the Federal Railroad Administration through the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center1. For aircraft, a fire hazard analysis could determine not only the time required for evacuation, but also the time available, based on the fire performance of the total system2. Such an application requires both predictive models of the fire environment and of passenger evacuation during fires.