Investigation of the Probability of a Safe Evacuation to Succeed in Subway Fire Emergencies Based on Bayesian Theory

• Published in: KSCE journal of civil engineering Vol. 22; no. 3; pp. 877 - 886
• Main Authors: Wang, Jinghong, Yan, Wenyu, Xu, Han, Zhi, Youran, Wang, Zhirong, Jiang, Juncheng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Seoul Korean Society of Civil Engineers 01.03.2018; Springer Nature B.V; 대한토목학회
• Subjects: Accidents; Active control; Bayesian analysis; Bayesian theory; Behavioural responses; Civil Engineering; Conditional probability; Engineering; Evacuation; Evacuation routing; Event tree analysis; Exhaust systems; Fires; Geotechnical Engineering & Applied Earth Sciences; Industrial Pollution Prevention; Monte Carlo simulation; Passenger safety; Probabilistic Learning for Decision-making on Civil Infrastructures; Probability distribution; Probability theory; Public safety; Risk analysis; Safety; Statistical analysis; Statistical methods; Theories; 토목공학; dynamic evacuation risk; safety evacuation probability; evacuation behavior statistics; posterior probability; bayesian theory
• ISSN: 1226-7988; 1976-3808
• DOI: 10.1007/s12205-018-0620-7

Emergency evacuation in subway fires is one of the hot issues in public safety. Based on Bayesian theory, a dynamic evacuation risk analysis model considering both psychological and behavioral responses of evacuees was proposed in this contribution. A subway fire scene was modeled using the Event Tree Analysis (ETA) according to the questionnaire survey at Nanjing Xinjiekou station. In this fire scenario, three control events (the fire alarm, the exhaust system and the evacuation route) were related to fire evacuation control and two control events (active escape and passive escape), which were specifically defined, were related to personnel characteristics. Subsequently, the probability of the final state of each scene was calculated by Monte Carlo simulation. Combined with the statistics of accidents and safe evacuation of subway fire cases from 1976 to 2013, the posterior probability distribution of safety evacuation was obtained after real-time dynamic updating of its precursor probability through Bayesian theory. Results show that the posterior probability of safety evacuation to succeed is around 0.8. This indicates that there is still a probability of 0.2 resulting in injury or fatalities in subway accidents even though most passengers are safely evacuated. It also suggests that utilization of 0.2 as the safety threshold would be an appropriate choice.