A State-of-the-Art of the Emergency Evacuation Capacity (EEC) Assessment for Rail Transit Terminal (RTT) in Malaysia

Railway system has evolved as one of the important modes of public transport and a favorite alternative method in resolving traffic congestion problem especially in urban areas like Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is reported that rail passenger volume is increasing yearly which caused more attention are made to the safety and emergency evacuation plan, especially if unexpected accident or emergency occurs in Rail Transit Terminal (RTT). The failure of emergency evacuation in any public buildings such as RTT may lead to a large scale of injuries or death. Despite the fact that a lot of safety measures and emergency response plans are taken as an initial preparation to face any emergencies that may occur in RTT, the emergency evacuation capacity (EEC) assessment studies are necessary to assess the effectiveness of the system implementation. Before employing any methods of assessment, it is crucial to scrutinize the factors that affect the effectiveness of EEC for any rail transit terminal. To the best of our knowledge, there are limited studies conducted on the EEC assessment at RTT in Malaysia. By virtue of this, we expect this paper provides a comprehensive review of a state-of-the-art of the emergency evacuation capacity (EEC) assessment for rail transit terminal in Malaysia by focusing on two important elements: (1) factors affected the effectiveness of evacuation capacity; and (2) methods of evacuation capacity assessment.