FSE 224 Kentucky Factors Limiting the Egress Calculation Predictions Questions

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enxna_n633

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FSE 224

University of Kentucky

FSE

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There are two questions that you have to answer it. initial posts should be between 150-500 words. ( I attached the document and there are different discussions from other students, and you have to Respond to at least three peer comments.)

Question 1: Factors Limiting the Egress Calculation Predictions: What factors inherently limit the egress calculation predictions? How could someone more accurately predict egress (i.e. what factors should be considered)?

Question 2: Reducing the Pre-Movement Time: What can be done to lessen the pre-movement time associated with evacuation?

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Question 2: Reducing the Pre-Movement Time What can be done to lessen the pre-movement time associated with evacuation? Students Answer/ Student 1: To reduce the pre-movement time, firts we need to know what happend when the alarm sound. I think that one factors ( in dorms) is that when the alarmm sound no one belive it. In college dorms, beside the drills, some students activetd the alarm to joke. WHen come the real emergency, no one start the evacuation at time, just because this. To reduce this trend, We can put cameras or some kind of divice that rudece this, also the dorm can create some kind of punishment to the people that make this. Also, we can put another divice that sounds more agresive. THose alarm, however they have a high volumen, sound very passiver. In a emergency You need to get out. I will put a alarm that sound like a real emergency and incite the crowd top go out. In day cares, the biggets factor, is that they need to organized the childs. The need to do a line, before start walking to anywhere. Here in daycares, is very difficult reduce the time of evacuation. To me as a engenering, I will desing a playground (yard) with, so, when thay hear the alarm. They can just walk to the outside and be re0organized outside. In general, the alarm play a big role. But also, we need to give3 the alar credibility so the peple can go oput at the time that they need to be. At least, in Puerto Rico, must of pepole will not belive at the first sound of the alarm. Student 2: To lessen the pre-movement time, we need to speed up the recognition time; in my experience with testing fire alarms or performing drills, they all assumed it was a drill and were slow as snails. It had me think why adults were not taking fire alarms seriously. Honestly, I think it may go back to your childhood where it seemed there were fire drills monthly in school, and even then, as a kid I thought to myself, here is another drill! Maybe if there weren’t so many drills, people would take it seriously? _What are your thoughts out there in the class Student 3: This is an interesting question for sure! I think to lessen the pre-movement time we must recognize the evacuation much sooner and at least take it seriously. So we do monthly drills in our schools and they are never taken seriously. It is quite the joke if you ask me. I think the students and even faculty know it's a drill and just do not care. we were looking around on how to better this issue and the board shut us down. We were thinking of sending a practice alarm to the school but without prior knowledge. That is basically how we operate, we never know if it is a drill or not we always respond just as seriously for both. So why not try that at the school? we tried and it got rejected sadly. But I realized that the students are probably used to the routine monthly drills that it builds a bad habit if the real one were ever to occur. Student 4: In order to lessen the pre-movement time recognition needs to be quicker. This can be done by occupants realizing the need for evacuation at a much faster rate. In my experience most people do not jump with a sense of urgency immediately at the audible and visuals of fire alarms that sense of urgency does not come until the physical presence of fire is seen. Some people have become jaded due to fire drills and may assume that it is not a real world scenario. Stressing the importance of evacuation can help lessen that pre-movement time and explaining the dangers of waiting. Student 5: There is no single easy answer to this question. And first off, I'd like to say that this course is very complicated. I'd suggest calling it FSE 444 instead of FSE 224! So given my confusion; I decided to devise my four laws of human behaviour in fires: 1- People do not believe an emergency till they see it, and if they see it, they don't like thinking too much about it. In other words, egress is ruled by human nature (and not just behavior). When faced with emergency, people want to get the heck away from this emergency. This is evidenced by many fires as in Coconut County fire or the 1993 World Trade Center fire. People who are away from the fire experience geo lazy, and did almost nothing. People who are "under fire" got their rears on gears! 2- Egress is like a chain. It's as strong as its weakest link: The weakest link is any egress is those with disabilities or in a complex building. People with disabilities arguably 15-20 % of the North American population - can delay evacuation. Also complex buildings as the World Trade Center or high rises are the weakest link in egress. In case of disabilities or complex buildings, people get confused. Add the confusion to the human nature of avoidance, and you've a perfect weak chain! My opinion: Concentrate on dealing with the disabled and with the complex buildings, and you are guaranteed to eliminate 90% of egress problems. 3- Educate or shut up: This is a tough one, because, again, humans (myself included) revel in thinking-less-ness. Humans, in other words, do not like to think; let alone thinking in the case of an emergency or fire. The best antidote, then, is to educate them in simple terms, and in non-emergency times. The simplest education takes place in fire drills. But what happens if you can't train every one in fire drills; specially those disabled or those occupying a complex building? In this case; educate fire wardens so when the hit hits the fans, these crowd leaders will take the lead! 4- Make friends with "Mr. Hough — the fireman:" I admit that I never thought of myself as a fireman. However, are not these people the people who take the first hit when a fire happens? So why wait for bad things to happen to get in touch with them? Why not invite them and have them get familiar with my buildings and its egress "in times of peace?" Why not get them and let them have some talks with the occupants? Why not show them around? Here, I'm doing a "preemptive strike"…against taking things for granted. I won't provide reference this time, though I swear to God that I contacted more than ten references! Now you're asking me: "Snooty Joe, how does this relate to improving on the premovement time?" My answer is simple: Re-read the above four laws, and you'll understand that I was talking about egress - with immediate or delayed pre-movement. Regards, Joe References: Proulx, G., & Reid, I. M. (2006). Occupant behavior and evacuation during the Chicago Cook County Administration Building fire. Journal of fire protection engineering, 16(4), 283-309. Proulx, G., & Fahy, R. F. (2008). Human Behavior and Evacuation Movement in Smoke. ASHRAE Transactions, 114(2). Proulx, G. (1994, October). The time delay to start evacuating upon hearing a fire alarm. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting(Vol. 38, No. 14, pp. 811-815). Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications. Question 1: Factors Limiting the Egress Calculation Predictions What factors inherently limit the egress calculation predictions? How could someone more accurately predict egress (i.e. what factors should be considered)? Students Answer/ Student 1: I think that one of the facors that limit more the evacuation time is the age. THe age have a big range of limitations. For example, the evacuation will be more difficult that a normall school. Bisede those kids are to small to understand, they will depend on the teacher to guide them. In a school, the students are expect to know what to do in a emergency. They participed in drills and understand how dangerous can be a fire. Also, if go to the other side, the older people may understanbd what is happening. But the may have some other dissabiliities that affect the evacuation. They may be postrated in a bed or a wheel chair, and also depending on other person to evacuation. To do a better predict of evacuation, I think you need to be in the situation. You need to think in all the possibles scenarios. We need top considerate every possible variable that can affect in the fire. However, the big ranger of age, they all depend of other people to help them in the evacuatioon. This is one of the factors that we need to comnsiderated here, also we need to considerated how much people we need to evacuated with those same dissabities or how many kids. Also we need to know where is the discharge of egree. Also, we need to know how long is the waliking distance for al of them. Student 2: The factors that inherently limit egress are crowd density, occupant abilities and available clear width. The one that that I take a hard to look at is occupant abilities, abilities can referred as to age or physical conditions, each of those have a particular exponent to used in calculation formulas. To predict egress you need to look at the whole package, what I mean by the whole package is the width, distance, age, physical heath and crowd density. Student 3: I think this is a great question that is usually missed when new construction or even an existing one is brought up to code. I think a lot of the factors will depend on the occupancy and its occupant's abilities aswell as population. The egress for a nursing home compared to a school for instance should not be the same. (At least we hope not) but the capabilities of the seniors along with any assistance should be taken into consideration when designing the correct egress. The population is another one! large egress doors along with the correct number of exits available should be the biggest considerations when developing egress for a high school for instance. Student 4: Factors that can affect the egress calculation predication can be age, occupants, exits, and paths alsong with many more. Age will always be a factor as different ages will require different resources to effectively egress. We often think of geriatrics and the slower pace or assited living situations but young children also have a limiting factor. Smaller children are not ready to make decisions on their own and require an adult to guide them which lowers the evacuation time. Population also plays a big role as the amount of occupants compared to the exits and exit paths greatly affects the evacuation prediction. Student 5: The factors which inherently limit the egress calculation predictions are crowd dynamics in open spaces, pedestrian movement in assemblies, human behavior in the evacuation process or commonly called egress process during emergency situations in enclosed environments and future use of the space. Factors that should be considered are delay time, disabled occupants, occupant characteristics such as different walking speed based on characteristics such as ability, gender, and age, pre-evacuation activity time, reaction time, time to notification and travel time. Proulx, G., “Movement of People: The Evacuation Timing,” Section 3, Chapter 13, SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering, 3rd ed., National Fire Protection Association, Quincy, MA, 2002, p. 3-342.
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Explanation & Answer

View attached explanation and answer. Let me know if you have any questions.

Running head: HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN FIRE

Human Behavior in Fire
Student’s Name:
Institutional Affiliation:

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HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN FIRE

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Human Behavior in Fire

Question 1: Factors Limiting the Egress Calculation Predictions
There are various factors that can inherently limit the egress calculation predictions such
as crowd density, occupant abilities, and the availability of clear width. When predicting egress,
it is vital to consider every factor since they are all important. However, occupant abilities are
also known as age or physical characteristics that help to predict egress more accurately.
Occupant characteristics such as, gender, age, and physical abilities are more vital since they
have a certain proponent that is used i...


Anonymous
Excellent resource! Really helped me get the gist of things.

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