Evacuation strategies for vertical ship lift during initial fire:Integrated application of stairs and elevators

Vertical ship lifts(VSLs) are widely used in navigation facilities worldwide because of their efficiency and low cost. Although several researchers have investigated fire evacuation strategies for reducing potential safety hazards in VSLs, an effective and integrated application of stairs and elevators when a fire occurs in a VSL is necessary. Several evacuation routes were analyzed according to VSL structure and evacuation times in this study. Objective function corresponding to the minimum vertical evacuation time and related simulation model was subsequently developed to obtain a cooperative evacuation plan considering different numbers of evacuees. The Three Gorges ship lift was used as an example, and simulation results indicate that number of evacuees and exit selection are the main influencing factors of the total evacuation time in the stair-and elevator-coordinated evacuation mode.Furthermore, the distance between people trapped in ship reception chamber and evacuation exits affects evacuees’ choice of exits. The proposed model can provide a theoretical reference for evacuation research during initial fire events in VSLs.