Proposed CAEva Simulation Method for Evacuation of People from a Buildings on Fire

This paper presents practical applications of the cellular automata theory for building fire simulation using the CAEva method. Thanks to the tests carried out using appropriately configured program, realistic results of simulated evacuation of people from the building have been achieved. The paper includes the references to actual fire disasters and provides numbers of their resulting casualties. Using such a kind of predication in civil engineering should increase the fire safety of buildings. Simulations described in this paper seem to be very useful, particularly in case of building renovation or temporary unavailability of escape routes. Using them, it is possible to visualize potential hazards and to avoid increased risk in case of fire. Inappropriate operation of buildings, including insouciant planning of renovations are among frequent reasons of tragic accidents cited by fire brigade information services. Similar problems are encountered by inspectors who assess spontaneous fire accidents or arsons during mas events, where wrong safety procedures or inappropriate attempts to cut costs resulted in tragedy. Thanks to the proposed solutions it shall be easier to envisage consequences of problematic decisions causing temporary or permanent unavailability of escape routes. This is exactly the problem analyzed by this paper. It does not take into account, by the rule, the influence of \(\mathrm{CO}_{2}\) and other gases on evacuation difficulty. The described method has been analyzed using descriptions of real life fires, the participants of which were neither asleep nor asphyxiated with carbon monoxide, while the escape was hindered by fire, room layout as well as stress and number of the event participants. The results achieved for such conditions are approximate to the actual (reallife) outcomes, which proved the method to be correct.