ESM: a building evacuation simulation model

Evacuation simulation model (ESM) is a tool for simulating evacuation in building fires. This model can simulate the optimized evacuation, the phased evacuation and the "Evacuability", which is defined as the percentage of successful evacuees to the total occupants in the building evaluated. It is also capable of tracing the occupants in every compartment of the building at every time step, and describing the values of passages between compartments during simulation. ESM is a network model consisting of stocks connected by flows. The stocks stand for the compartments, such as rooms, corridors, hallways, stairs, landings and lobbies. The flows represent the passages between compartments. Using ESM, the evacuation safety of buildings can be evaluated. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.