People Evacuation: Simplified evaluation of Available Safe Egress Time (ASET) in encolosures

The evaluation of the Available Safe Egress Time (ASET) is essential for organizing people evacuation in case of fire in industrial premises, buildings or generic enclosures. This task is usually achieved by considering several performance criteria and then calculating the time for reaching established threshold limits for each of those criteria. In the paper a sensitivity study for the ASET performance criteria is presented. To this aim the Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS) has been adopted. A comparison between FDS results and an analytical approach for a quick estimation of the ASET in an enclosure is showed. The methodology may be usable as a decision support tool for emergency evacuation design and management. Copyright © 2012, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l.