5. Support System for verifying evacuation safety in case of station fire

Design specifications in building standards are determined on the basis of maximum distances to emergency exits, etc., which can be used to evaluate the safety of evacuation in case of a fire in a station.
However, the objects of these specifications are often offices and other such spaces in stations.
Generally, they do not consider stations as a whole. Consequently, a support system was developed as a tool to verify the safety of station evacuation measures when being designed, by predicting passenger flows (evacuation times) and movement of smoke (time for smoke layer to descend) (Fig 1).

A new calculation formula was created for estimating the number of people that need to be evacuated from the station concourse, which is needed for calculating evacuation time. The estimation formula was created using passenger flow surveys that were carried out in 5 stations of different size and layout.
Using the input variables of concourse surface area, number of station users, number of lines of movement, etc., the formula gives the density of people that need to be evacuated per section of station concourse.

As a result, using this formula dispenses with the need to conduct on-site surveys to obtain a setting for the number of people that need to be evacuated, and it is possible to reproduce their distribution in the station when a fire breaks out (Fig. 1).

In addition, employing the existing PA system in the station used for assisting evacuation, tests were conducted to examine the effectiveness of different sound broadcasting methods to guide people out of the station (Fig. 2). The effectiveness of instructions given through the different broadcasts was integrated into the system.
Based on this integration, it should be possible to investigate the effectiveness of different types of evacuation guidance to shorten overall evacuation time (Fig. 3).