Study On Single Building Based Evacuation And Earthquake Casualties Evaluation

Frequent earthquakes are threatening people’s lives and property safety. Evaluatingthe seismic losses possibly encountered in future earthquakes and reducing theearthquake-induced damage to its minimum are critical jobs. The occurrence of anearthquake and its intensity are unpredictable, but the casualties within a structure underdifferent earthquake intensities can be assessed. Cellular automata model is graduallyapplied to the personnel seismic evacuation simulation, while Cellular automata modelthat can accurately represent the geometry of complex structures and take into accountdifferent evacuation speeds and personnel dislocation arrangements are rare. Meanwhilethe researches about casualty assessment based on cellular automata evacuation modeland structural collapse analysis are scarcer. This study investigates the evacuationsimulation based on an improved cellular automata model, and the simulation results arecompared with a surveillance video covering a real earthquake evacuation process.Finally, by combining a single building’s evacuation process with the structuralnonlinear dynamic time-history analysis, the seismic casualties are quantitativelyevaluated according to the casualty criteria. The main contents are as follows:1. An improved cellular automata model for pedestrian evacuation is proposed. Theevacuation process of a room without obstacles is numerically simulated. Through theanalysis of the evacuation parameters’ impact on evacuation time and its variationcoefficient, reasonable variation ranges of evacuation parameters are obtained and thecorresponding variation coefficients of evacuation time are controlled within20%.2. Evacuation process of a classroom with obstacles is simulated and differencesbetween the simulation results and real earthquake evacuation process are analyzed.Obstacles’ and channel regions’ effects on evacuation time are studied and theclassroom’s evacuation process is visually simulated. By comparing the results ofsimulation and surveillance video, it is found that selecting reasonable evacuationparameters can simulate the evacuation process with a desirable matching degree.3. The earthquake-induced casualty of a single building is quantitatively assessed.The evacuation process is simulated, and the results of evacuation simulation arecombined with the structural nonlinear dynamic time-history analysis in a way of timesynchronization and space overlap. The stranded people and the casualties’ locationdistribution and number are predicted. Finally the single building’s seismic casualty isevaluated, which helps to guide the post-earthquake rescue plan and achieves the goal ofoptimizing structural design.