In the field of Fire Safety Engineering (FSE), virtual reality has increasingly assumed an important role, especially for the simulation of fire and escape. The present work aims at comparing the potential of virtual simulations of the escape of occupants in case of emergency to simulations based on traditional calculations. Above all, the goal is to highlight the greater adherence to reality of the simulations that use behavioural models compared to those that use hydraulic models. Simulations are performed for the case study of a listed historic tower in Bologna city centre and calculate the Required Safe Escape Time (RSET) in various evacuation scenarios using the innovative Pathfinder® software which, in addition to using flow-based models, is "agent-based", as it manages the variables related to behavioural factors and can model complex escape scenarios faster than hand-made calculation. Case study results show that RSET times calculated with the behavioural steering mode in the virtual environment are 15-19% higher than the hydraulic mode (SFPE) and therefore demonstrate that the Steering mode is more realistic, as human behaviour significantly influences the evacuation process. Anyway, all the realistic simulations return safety margin times above 100% of the RSET as asked by national law, highlighting that it is possible to guarantee the safety of the occupants in a particular historical building using innovative Fire Safety Engineering (FSE) approaches, even if the prescriptive rules are not respected
University of Bologna, Italy
University of Bologna, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-8537-8103
Titolo del capitolo
Fire Safety Engineering: The Computational Simulation of the Escape in a Historic Building in Bologna
Autori
Stefano Tagliatti, Marco Alvise Bragadin
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0289-3.112
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2023
Copyright
© 2023 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Titolo del libro
CONVR 2023 - Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Construction Applications of Virtual Reality
Sottotitolo del libro
Managing the Digital Transformation of Construction Industry
Curatori
Pietro Capone, Vito Getuli, Farzad Pour Rahimian, Nashwan Dawood, Alessandro Bruttini, Tommaso Sorbi
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2023
Copyright
© 2023 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0289-3
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0289-3
eISBN (xml)
979-12-215-0257-2
Collana
Proceedings e report
ISSN della collana
2704-601X
e-ISSN della collana
2704-5846