Study on the Concept of Using Lifts and Escalators in Evacuation Routes Using Fragility Assessment (Damage Analysis and Pedestrian Simulation)

In Japan, seismic safety design has been used for buildings on the ground surface and for important facilities and equipment. However, few studies have been conducted on maintaining system functionality during earthquakes, considering buildings and equipment within buildings as a single system. Lifts and escalators, which are normally used as flow lines, cannot be used in evacuation routes in the event of fire or disaster. In this study, a pedestrian simulation is carried out on the assumption of escalators after the revision of seismic standards reported in a previous paper, taking into account damage occurring to equipment related to the selection of evacuation routes, and the concept of an appropriate evacuation route is examined. This paper analyses the effectiveness of the use of escalators and elevators for rapid evacuation using pedestrian simulation in a high-rise building. As a result, it was confirmed that, in the analyzed building model used in this study, the use of escalators and elevators is effective in reducing the evacuation time by about 70 seconds for every 10 stories, compared to the time when evacuating by staircases.