Title: Sensitivity analysis for the reliability of occupant safety evacuation under fire emergency

Authors: Jinhui Wang; Qimiao Xie; Shouxiang Lu

Addresses: College of Ocean Science and Engineering, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai 201306, China ' College of Ocean Science and Engineering, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai 201306, China ' State Key Laboratory of Fire Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027, China

Abstract: The life safety assessment of evacuation under fire emergency is a popular issue in performance-based fire protection assessment and design. To address uncertainty involved in safety assessment and design, the reliability and sensitivity analysis models of occupant safety evacuation are proposed in this paper. By comparing ASET with RSET, the state of occupant safety evacuation can be determined. With the consideration of the uncertainty of variables in the limit state function, the interference characteristics of ASET and RSET can be achieved, and the reliability model of occupant evacuation is developed. Furthermore, the sensitivity analysis model is presented to evaluate the effects of stochastic variables and distribution parameters on the reliability of occupant safety evacuation. In order to illustrate the proposed method, a case study is given with a single-room building.

Keywords: evacuation risk; reliability index; sensitivity analysis; parameter uncertainty; occupant safety; occupant evacuation; fire emergencies; fire protection assessment; fire protection design; safety assessment; emergency management; risk assessment; fires.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRS.2015.073135

International Journal of Reliability and Safety, 2015 Vol.9 No.4, pp.272 - 290

Received: 28 May 2015
Accepted: 24 Jul 2015
Published online: 20 Nov 2015 *

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