Individual Ascent and Descent Evacuation Performance on Long Stairs Considering the Effects of Stepping Pattern and Light Conditions

To better understand the movement characteristics of pedestrians on long stairs, a series of individual evacuation experiments on a 12-level staircase were conducted in a public-access building in China. The factors including movement direction, walking preference, stepping pattern and light conditions were considered in the experiments. Pedestrians’ space–time features, individual movement speed, blood pressure (BP) before and after experiments, and the change dynamics of heart rate (HR) during experiments were mainly analyzed and discussed. The mean individual upward speed with double-step pattern and single-step pattern was 0.92 m/s and 0.66 m/s, respectively. The mean individual downward speed with double-step pattern and single-step pattern was 1.01 m/s and 0.82 m/s, respectively. Only systolic BP appeared a significant increase in case of stair-ascending, from 107.26 to 115.02 under the condition of daytime and from 108.39 to 115.64 under the condition of nighttime. The results of HR experienced a sharp increase at the early stage (first around 100 s for stair-ascending and first about 40 s for stair-descending), and then maintained in a very small fluctuation range. The findings in this study can be adopted as input parameters in the evacuation models involving long staircase evacuation. The physiological results (i.e., BP and HR) can be used to evaluate the effort intensity of pedestrians when moving on long stairs.