FIRE EVACUATION ANALYSIS OF HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS USING PATH FINDER AND FIRE DYNAMICS SIMULATOR

This research presents a systematic framework for the fire evacuation analysis of high-rise buildings using Fire Dynamics Simulator and Pathfinder. FDS can be used to investigate fire development, smoke movement, temperature, visibility, and relevant fire-effluent conditions, whereas Pathfinder can be used to simulate occupant movement, route selection, congestion, and evacuation time. The principal advantage of the combined methodology is that it considers evacuation as a dynamic process occurring within a changing fire environment. An evacuation route cannot be considered safe solely because it is geometrically available; its suitability may change as smoke and heat propagate through the building. The analysis indicates that fire location, staircase availability, occupant population, pre-evacuation delay, route congestion, and smoke conditions are key factors affecting high-rise evacuation performance. The use of multiple protected evacuation routes and effective smoke-control measures can improve evacuation resilience. For academic and professional applications, the proposed methodology can support performance-based fire-safety design, emergency planning, evacuation strategy development, and identification of high-risk building areas. However, the illustrative results in this paper must be replaced with actual FDS and Pathfinder outputs before the work is presented as an empirical simulation study. Overall, FDS–Pathfinder integrated modelling provides a valuable computational framework for evaluating the interaction between fire development and human evacuation in high-rise buildings.

1.                Thunderhead Engineering. Pathfinder Documentation: Emergency Preparedness and Fire Exposure Analysis. Thunderhead Engineering. 2.                Thunderhead Engineering. Manually Coupling PyroSim (FDS) and Pathfinder to Respond to Smoke. Pathfinder 2026.1 Documentation. 3.                Thunderhead Engineering. Fractional Effective Dose Integration with Evacuation Results. Pathfinder 2026.1 Documentation. 4.                Thunderhead Engineering. Pathfinder User Manual. Thunderhead Engineering. 5.                Pauls, J. L. Building Evacuation and Other Fire-Safety Measures: Some Research Results and Their Application to Building Design, Operation, and Regulation. National Research Council Canada. 6.                Pauls, J. L. Evacuation and Other Fire Safety Measures in High-Rise Buildings. National Research Council Canada. 7.                Pauls, J. L. Movement of People in Building Evacuations. National Research Council Canada. 8.                Proulx, G. Evacuation Time and Movement in Apartment Buildings. National Research Council Canada. 9.                Proulx, G. Critical Factors in High-Rise Evacuations. National Research Council Canada. 10.             Proulx, G. High-Rise Office Egress: The Human Factors. National Research Council Canada.