Simulation on Passenger Evacuation under Fire Emergency in Metro Station

Metro system is one of the most important modes of transportation to relieve traffic congestion. Passenger emergency evacuation in metro stations is a key issue in safety management due to heavily overcrowded population and the complexity of underground spatial environment. This paper combines desired speed, visibility condition, and some key station facilities usage state, and analyses passenger speed variation in different cases, especially in the event of fire. Passenger evacuation simulation scenarios in the Xizhimen metro station in Beijing are proposed to further study the influence on evacuation time when passenger desired speed and other situation are changed considering different parameters including passenger comfortable speed, visibility conditions, and the usage conditions of escalators and AFC machines. Through evacuation simulation, the research gives the passenger evacuation time, evacuation capability of the station, and the variance profile of passenger density over time of Stair 1 and Passage 1 under different visibility conditions. After comparing simulation results of different evacuation simulation scenarios of fire, this paper evaluates the evacuation capability of the station and then identifies the bottleneck of the metro station in fire emergency.