Hazardous Area Risk-Based Evacuation Simulation and Analysis of Building Construction Sites

Abstract

Building construction sites are highly complex and uncertain, and frequent incidents of dangerous events can easily lead to casualties. Thus, both risk assessment and evacuation analysis are fundamental to safety management. This paper proposed a methodology for risk-based evacuation analysis and illustrated its application with a case study. First, a joint probability model was proposed for the risk assessment of hazardous areas on construction sites, in which hazards are classified and identified by risk factor analysis. Second, a modified two-dimensional cellular automaton (CA) model was established to simulate the evacuation process by coupling the risk probability of hazardous areas into the evolution rule. A case study was presented to show that the risk-based evacuation model can describe the real-life situation as pedestrian movement is disturbed due to the occurrence of random events, especially in hazardous areas with high joint probabilities of risk. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by (1) assessing the risk of hazardous areas on construction sites with a probabilistic method; and (2) simulating the emergency evacuation process with a computational method considering the influence of hazardous areas. Therefore, a systematic approach to risk-based evacuation analysis in which the coupling between risk assessment and evacuation simulation is achieved.