A quick method for emergency evacuation design in work places

To guarantee the safety of workers in premises it is necessary to design an egress-system capable to ensure a safe evacuation during an emergency. To supplement the design tools with an analytical method that permits to assess in a fast and simple way the performance of premises egress-system, in this work the PASS (Preliminary Assessment of the egress-System Safety) method has been presented and applied. The comparison among PASS, STEPS® (a FSE evacuation model) and a real fire drill observations has shown the capabilities of the PASS method as a quick tool for emergency evacuation planning during the pre-design process. This permits a rapid preliminary definition of the main egress-system characteristics and a focused use of FSE's software, reducing thus the overall computing time necessary for the design. Copyright © 2010, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l.