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Technology
Emergency Planning: Getting Them Out Safely
(enr.construction.com
- 7/22/02 issue)
By Tom
Sawyer
A Scottish company with software that
models emergency evacuations says sales have surged in the
wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
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| (Image courtesy of IES, Ltd) |
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Prior to those events, Simulex, from
Integrated Environmental Solutions Ltd., Glasgow, was finding
a niche among planners tweaking designs for faster, safer
evacuations. But sales jumped 60% in the months following
the attacks, says product creator, Peter Thompson, IES's software
development manager.
Thompson says Simulex is based on observations
of people working their way out of crowded spaces. "We
measured walk-speeds, changes of direction, overtaking, body
twists and the way one person slows down because of the obstruction
of the person in front," he says. The program places
simulated people individually in the CAD plans of a structure's
floors and stairwells and then directs them to evacuate.
"It's a good piece of software,"
says Norris Harvey, senior mechanical engineer with New York-based
Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas Inc. The firm has
used Simulex to study subway platform and tunnel evacuations.
"We put 2,000 to 4,000 people in a station," he
says, "Then you do the simulation and watch those guys
get up and run out."
Information can be found at http://www.ies4d.com/VESystem/VE-Evacuation/simulex/simulex.htm
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