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Escape Dynamics in Office Buildings: Using Molecular Dynamics to Quantify the Impact of Certain Aspects of Human Behavior During Emergency Evacuation

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Abstract

Emergency evacuation of office buildings, in the event of a life-threatening situation such as a fire incident, is a function of various factors ranging from architectural to socio-behavioral ones. We show how individual-based modeling approaches such as molecular dynamics can be coupled with behavioral responses in panic situations, in order to quantify in a systematic way the impact of human familiarity to the space, during emergency evacuation. The ultimate goal is to identify certain crucial design features that can help in engineering better evacuation plans.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Dr. Nick Baker, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge for his valuable suggestions. S. T. R. wishes to acknowledge support by the Cambridge, European Trust ESRC-MRC Interdisciplinary studentships and the A.G. Leventis Foundation. C. I. S. acknowledges partial support by the National Technical University of Athens through the Basic Research Program “Constantin Caratheodory.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Stamatina Th. Rassia

  2. School of Applied Mathematics and Physical Sciences, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, 157 80, Greece

    Constantinos I. Siettos

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  1. Stamatina Th. Rassia
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  2. Constantinos I. Siettos
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Correspondence to Constantinos I. Siettos.

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Rassia, S.T., Siettos, C.I. Escape Dynamics in Office Buildings: Using Molecular Dynamics to Quantify the Impact of Certain Aspects of Human Behavior During Emergency Evacuation. Environ Model Assess 15, 411–418 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10666-009-9209-3

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