Building Occupant Egress Data

Published

August 27, 2010

Author(s)

Richard D. Peacock, Erica D. Kuligowski

Abstract

Data on people movement on stairs were collected from 9 office and residential building evacuations in the United States. The buildings involved in this study range from 6 stories to 62 stories in height. The data were collected by positioning video cameras out of the way of building occupants to record an overhead view of occupant movement in an exit stair during the evacuation. In most buildings, unless specified, the video cameras were placed on every other floor to capture a view of that floor s main landing, the door into the stair at that level, and 2-3 steps on each side of the main landing (leading to and from the main landing). After video data was taken from each building evacuation drill, NIST recorded specific data from the videos into a spreadsheet format for each stair monitored during the drill. For each stair recorded, data were collected 1) for each occupant evacuating in that stair and 2) for each time during the evacuation drill that the occupant was seen at a specific floor in the stair (a camera position).

Citation

OTHER - 4024

Report Number

4024

NIST Pub Series

Other

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Keywords

building fires, egress, evacuation, human behavior

Citation

Peacock, R. and Kuligowski, E. (2010), Building Occupant Egress Data, Other, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD (Accessed October 31, 2024)