The Use of Lifts in Offices in Social Distancing Environments

This paper addresses the potential remaining lift capacity for high-rise office buildings when limiting the number of passengers per car to only two persons due to social distancing restrictions in the COVID-19 era. It describes an array of measures that have to be taken to guarantee personal safety and sufficient distance, namely by eliminating crossing traffic and optimising the potential use of the lift system. Both the waiting time and the lobby capacity can be decisive when searching for the optimum. Without proper measures only about 20-30% of the original population can usually be served. With major measures and by successfully reducing peak flows the new maximum population can be increased to about 40-60% or the original population.