Study on Transportation Efficiency of Evacuation Using Elevators in Comparison with Evacuation Using Stairsin a High-Rise Building – Is Use of Elevator in Evacuation Really Effective for General People? –

In a building fire, occupants are basically required to escape by stairs and not to use elevators. However, in many recent fires, quite a number of people used elevators for their evacuation. Also, it is expected that the number of people who have difficulty in using stairs in evacuation will increase, since the proportion of aged people in the total population has been rapidly increasing in recent years and the accessibility of buildings for disabled people has also been improved in Japan. To consider this situation, we made a simplified model to evaluate evacuation time by elevators, and conducted case studies in order to examine the feasibility and issues of elevator use for evacuation. The results of the case studies indicate that, if the elevator use can be designated only for a small proportion of occupants such as disabled people, it would be effective to use the elevator in the evacuation of those people. However, for the general building population, it is suggested that it would be better to use stairs for their evacuation in most cases thus enabling the evacuation of disabled people by elevator to be more effective.