Evaluation of Evacuation Time for Each Evacuation Equipment in Neighborhood Facilities: Focused on Descending Lifeline and Elevating Equipment for Evacuation

At present, the standard for installing evacuation equipment that enables occupants to evacuate on their own is determined by the use of a building and its floor area. However, according to the "Installation Maintenance and Safety Control of Fire-Fighting Systems Act" and "Fire Safety Standards for evacuation equipment", the installation standard for evacuation equipment mentions only the minimum number of equipment to be installed based on the floor area. Thus, this installation standard fails to reflect the corresponding number of occupants in a building and the effectiveness of the evacuation equipment. Thus, there is a high probability that most of the evacuation equipment installed based on the "one-size-fits-all" legal regulation will not guarantee the safety of occupants in case of a fire. To address this, the performance evaluation of the effectiveness of evacuation and the distribution ratio of equipment per occupant needs to be prioritized. Therefore, we conduct mock experiments on the descending lifeline and elevating evacuation equipment to analyze their efficiencies. Moreover, we propose a model for calculating the evacuation time for the descending lifeline and elevating evacuation equipment based on the experimental results. Furthermore, we conduct effectiveness evaluation by using the evacuation equipment. The results show that most people cannot be evacuated using the evacuation equipment. That is, evacuation equipment was determined to be insufficient for ensuring safety as per the current standard. Therefore, the installation of evacuation equipment according to its efficiency and capacity is considered necessary.