STUDY ON EVACUATION USING ELEVATORS IN A HIGH-RISE BUILDING

In many past fires, not a few people used elevators for their evacuation, although they were often told not to use elevators for fire evacuation. On the other hand, the number of people, who have difficulty to use stairs, has been larger year by year not only in usual buildings but also in high-rise buildings as well, since the aged people have been rapidly increasing along with improved accessibility for disabled people. Also, the potential demand of elevator use in evacuation from a high-rise building has been growing recently especially after the collapse of WTC towers on September 11th, 2001. The evacuation using elevators in case of a fire is still a controversial issue, because the safe operation of elevators is not always secured during evacuation in a fire. In the context of this situation, we developed a simplified model to simulate the operation of multiple elevators for calculating evacuation time by elevators. And, we conducted some case studies with this elevator operation model to examine the feasibility and issues of elevator use for evacuation mainly from the viewpoint of its transportation efficiency of occupants rather than fire safety aspects during the operation.