Circulation movement is often a critical part of the analysis for high occupancy areas with lots of foot traffic. As research and technology improves, engineers are adding non-evacuation investigations to their résumés. Jennifer Wiley, a Fire Protection Engineer at Jensen Hughes, will discuss these other uses for people movement models at the Fire and Evacuation Technical Modeling Conference (FEMTC).
Circulation movement can include queuing, ticketing, and many other behaviors not commonly depicted in evacuation studies.
Traditionally, people movement models have been developed with a focus on modeling evacuation in the case of a fire emergency. However, as the models and the industry have progressed, the needs of the people movement modeling community have expanded to include capabilities for non-fire emergencies and non-emergency scenarios such as ingress and circulation. Advances in wayfinding and decision-making technologies also provide an opportunity to improve people movement within a building but have not been fully integrated into existing models. Additionally, as models continue to be used for both emergency and non- emergency uses, the ability to represent more complex and realistic movements and agendas, such as carrying rolling luggage or group movement, have been identified and researched. These scenarios provide novel uses for existing egress models as well as present unique challenges.
In a circulation simulation, information such as accumulated usage (or instantaneous) can help identify bottlenecks or wall advertisement positioning.
This presentation will review the current capabilities of people movement models, new uses for egress models not related to fire egress, and the adaptations of models necessary to enable broader more robust simulations. Topics will include security and ingress, dynamic signage and wayfinding, and interior tasks (carrying or pushing objects, group movement, etc.)
FEMTC 2016 will begin on November 16 in Málaga, Spain. For more information, visit the conference page.
