People's Movement in Narrow Paths with Different Width

One of the most critical issues to manage in case of accidents in industrial facilities is people evacuation. The outcome of the evacuation process depends on many factors, including the adversity of the accidental event, the behavioural features of people involved, the functional vulnerability of the system, such as the geometrical layout of the egress system. In order to reach a safety place in industrial facilities, people can be driven to go through narrow corridors or passages due to the peculiarity of the work place. Such passages force people to move in a single line and can reduce the movement speed, thus increasing the time required to evacuate. In this work we analyse people's movement in paths with two different widths (0.8 and 0.9 m) and with the presence of different types of curves (90 degrees and 18 degrees). The data were collected in the LabCUBE(egress) experimental laboratory, a portable structure with a flexible layout designed by researchers of University of Udine. In this paper we present the results obtained from the experiments and simple relationships between people's speed and the path width. These equations can be a useful tool to help in designing the egress paths as well as in assessing the vulnerability of existing egress systems where narrow paths are present.