The design and adoption of an effective egress system is a necessary measure to accomplish the objectives required for people's safety in case of fire. Once the designed egress system has been realized, people safety issue moves from a design perspective to a management problem, as stated by Fire Safety Engineering standards. To manage effectively the egress system safety, it is advisable that the stakeholders (designer, safety manager, etc.) have simple, quick and effective tools to use both for understanding how the egress system works, and to check its strengths and weaknesses, considering different scenarios.
In this work the authors present and discuss PASS (Prelirninary Assessment of the egress System Safety), a test-based method developed adopting a vulnerability approach. PASS may be used for a quick assessment of the egress system safety, in order to identify its weaknesses without resorting to a simulation of the evacuation process. As a part of a validation study, PASS has been applied to analyse an existing egress system: in comparing the outcomes of PASS, STEPS, Evac, along with the data obtained from an evacuation drill, PASS has demonstrated itself as a quick method for a preliminary assessment of egress system performance.
