Study of Evacuation Movement Through Different Building Components

These experiments were conducted in order to obtain data on the walking velocities, twisting rates and flow rates in different building components. The building components studied were doorways and comers. An experiment was also conducted to find the effect of opposed flow on these parameters. Students were used as the test subject in these experiments. After the experiments had be conducted the data was extracted using an image analysing technique. This involved using the video footage of the experiments. This video footage was firstly converted to a computer file using a video film capturing package. The resulting computer file was then able to be analysed using the computer program Persias which is able to calculate velocities, distances, and twisting rates of people or objects. The experiments provided velocity data as a function of the interperson distance and the results obtained are similar to the results obtained in previous research which gives the movement velocity as a function of the occupant densities