Everyone hates the inconvenience of fire drills, but we all appreciate why we have them. Getting everybody out quickly and safely in an emergency must be a major objective of any new building design. Simulex from IES <VE> enables you to simulate occupant behaviour in the event of a building evacuation, identify potential problems and find solutions. Used throughout the world, Simulex is a simple, convenient design tool to help keep people safe.
What Simulex does:
Simulex enables you to define a building and its occupants, and simulate how they will evacuate during an emergency. It uses a series of 2D floor plans, with exits and staircases ‘linked’ together. You can identify any problem areas and evaluate solutions. Simulex is used worldwide and is readily accepted by planning authorities.
How Simulex Works:
Simulex models movement of people in a building. It is based on real human behaviour, using data gathered from video analysis of individuals moving in crowds. Research results from around the world are used to augment the data, giving a unique level of accuracy and an unmatched capability for simulating building evacuation.
The starting point for any Simulex study is a set of 2D floor plans. Ideally, these plans will include obstructions such as tables and columns. The plans are connected via ‘linked’ staircases, and exits are defined where occupants can leave. Each floor plan and staircase is displayed in its own simulation window so you can view every event.
You can go on to define ‘distance maps’ for different evacuation strategies. Each occupant can be assigned a distance map. You can also test travel distances and escape routes by ‘dropping’ people into the model and viewing what happens.
Having established your distance maps, you can define the building population by age and gender, and take account of factors including walking speed, body shape and time taken to respond to a fire alarm. You can refine the profile by placing individuals or groups in defined areas. The simulation begins, allowing you to view how the population evacuates (including queuing, congestion, overtaking etc.) as it happens. You can monitor the number of people left in the building at any time, and ask Simulex to predict how long it will take all the occupants to reach the exits.
Depending upon the size of the model and the speed of your computer, the simulation may not occur in real time. You can therefore ‘record’ the simulation and play it back in real time, with all the usual video control functions.
Commercial Benefits:
Simulex can help you prove to planning authorities that your design meets or exceeds their criteria. It can also help you win projects by demonstrating your capabilities where occupant evacuation and/or safety is a particular design issue.
Features of Simulex, such as the distance maps, can be used in other contexts such as planning the distances between spaces or objects. For example, in a hospital you can measure the distance between different departments, or look at the optimal placement of shared life-saving equipment.
