Comparison analysis of emergency evacuation between computer simulations and real exercises for large-space buildings

Due to the high capacity of large buildings, any defective designs in their evacuation facilities may result in massive casualties. In the past, many disasters were caused by ineffective emergency evacuation of large crowds. However, presently, related evacuation studies all have their limitations and problems, such as difficulties and financial constraints for executing full-scale evacuation exercise, moral issues arose from real-life simulation exercises, and neglecting software analysis processes. This research focused on emergency evacuation for large-space gymnasiums and addressed to three major issues: unreliability of computer software simulations, moral risk of real-life exercises and whether or not the scale of large crowd evacuation equivalent to that of the same size crowd exiting. Then, computerized simulation analyses are conducted with two commonly used softwares, such as Simulex and Exodus. Results showed a great variance of risk-bearing value is yielded from different software analysis processes. Also, the authors propose the concept of ‘Hot Area’ replacement exercise to decrease the impact of moral and economic issues. Ultimately, it is found that the exiting time of 2089 people differed 45% from software simulation results. Hence, it is concluded that large-scale crowd exiting does not equal to evacuation of the same number of people.