Review on emergency evacuation time estimation for performance-based fire safety design

Fire safety provisions have to be determined through performance-based design in many projects. There is a need for quick estimation of evacuation time for scenario analysis in hazard assessment. The key equations on estimating evacuation time have to be better understood. An updated review on emergency evacuation will be presented in this article. Review started from the earlier works based on hydraulic flow models. Three key parameters on crowd density, movement speed, and flow rate are outlined. Design values recommended in those calculation procedures are summarized in a table and several graphs for horizontal movement, up and down stairs.