The program shows the evacuation process graphically on the screen, with plan views of individual floors and staircases displayed in separate windows. Graphics representing a plan view of the occupants can be viewed during the whole simulation process. The occupants move towards pre-defined exits, with individual walking velocities dependant upon individual characteristics and the proximity of other people. During a simulated evacuation, the program produces realistic flow rates of 1.1 to 1.4 persons per metre exit width per second, representing a normal adult population under calm conditions.
When all the occupants have moved through the exits, the total evacuation time is displayed on the screen, and a data file for the results is written to disk. The simulation can be recorded onto hard disk to facilitate a later play-back of the simulation. This feature can be very useful for larger simulations because the calculation time can take many hours if thousands of people are modelled. The later play-back can be run almost in real time, depending on the hard access time, CPU speed and graphics performance of your PC.
In the program, three types of windows are present. They are; floor plan windows, staircase windows and an information window containing general information about the simulation. Each floor and each staircase are displayed on separate windows.
The contents of 6 Modelling an Evacuation with Simulex
