Work

Evacuation Patterns of Occupant Groups in Super High-Rise Building Stairwells Under Different Visibility Conditions

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Stairwells constitute critical escape routes for emergency evacuation during building disasters. The spread of fire smoke and the failure of lighting systems can significantly reduce visibility within stairwells, thereby adversely affecting evacuation speed. This issue is particularly pronounced in super high-rise buildings. In this study, a typical super high-rise building was selected as the experimental site. The variation laws of key parameters such as evacuation time, speed, and heart rate were investigated for groups with different gender proportions in stairwells under different visibility conditions. The experimental results show that: First, collaboration within multi-person groups can effectively mitigate the adverse impact of reduced visibility on evacuation speed. Second, different gender proportions within groups affect evacuation speed, with groups having a higher proportion of males demonstrating relatively faster evacuation speed. Third, under identical visibility conditions, the heart rates of multi-person groups during evacuation are generally lower than those of individual groups; in low-visibility environments, the heart rates of members within the same group are significantly higher than those under normal visibility conditions. Accordingly, this study proposes a mixed-gender group evacuation strategy under low-visibility conditions. The findings provide empirical data support for the formulation of emergency evacuation response strategies in super high-rise buildings.

Source: Fire

DOI: 10.3390/fire9020087