Human behavior in a staircase during a total evacuation drill in a high-rise building

Many studies have been conducted on the evacuation behavior on the staircases of buildings, but very little data are available for a situation with many occupants in a crowded high-rise building. Therefore, this study investigated the evacuation behavior of a large number of evacuees on the staircase of a 25-story high-rise building. A total evacuation drill was conducted with 2088 evacuees, and the behavior of 1136 evacuees on the landings of the south staircase was recorded by a video recorder on the ceiling. The relationship between the density and speed of the evacuees on the landings was analyzed from the evacuation data for two situations: without and with merging in the stair flow. The evacuation stair flow in this drill had merging occupants entering from the floors, but no one entered from the lower floors during the latter period of the drill. Therefore, the flow during the latter period was treated as non-merging flow, for which it was observed that, when the staircase was fully crowded, the density on the landings in the moving situation was different from that in the stopped situation. Moreover, the density on the landings was different from that on the treads. Furthermore, in the merging flow, a merging ratio of approximately 50:50 occurred during the congested evacuation. Copyright (C) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.