An improved CA model for evacuation simulation in super high-rise buildings: Considering evacuees’ rest on refuge floors and preference for taking evacuation elevators

Most of the previous studies on emergency evacuation simulation in super high-rise buildings have overlooked the role of refuge floors, which are vital for recovery of fatigued evacuees. Additionally, advancements in elevator safety have made evacuation elevators a feasible option as supplementary evacuation facilities to staircases in super high-rise buildings. While some evacuees prefer to take evacuation elevators during emergencies, others still tend to use staircases only. This study proposes an improved cellular automata (CA) model that accounts for the effects of evacuees’ rest on refuge floors and preference for taking evacuation elevators. To build the foundation for setting model parameters of speed recovery after resting on refuge floors, two evacuation experiments are conducted in a super high-rise office building. The improved CA model is developed by incorporating space configurations, updating rules of evacuees and evacuation elevators. Effects of thresholds for taking rest on refuge floors, rest time on refuge floors, ratio of evacuees with different evacuation facility preferences, as well as gender ratio of evacuees on the evacuation efficiency are simulated by the improved CA model. The findings demonstrate that the proposed model can effectively simulate complex evacuation scenarios, including the effects of speed recovery after fatigued evacuees rest on refuge floors and evacuees’ preference for taking evacuation elevators. This study offers valuable insights for optimizing evacuation plans in super high-rise buildings.