Research on Elevator-Aided Evacuation Strategies in Super Tall Buildings

Super tall buildings have always faced evacuation challenges such as difficulty in evacuating occupants from upper floors, inability of individuals with mobility impairments (such as the elderly, the weak, the sick, and the disabled) to use stairwells for evacuation, and prolonged evacuation times for the entire building. To address the above issues, this paper proposes a novel concept for elevator-aided evacuation: different elevator evacuation strategies and modes are presented based on the fire development stages and the spatial characteristics of super tall buildings. This aims to assist architects, elevator consultants, elevator manufacturers, construction, and property management companies in clarifying the design requirements for evacuation elevator systems and in formulating elevator evacuation strategies, conforming operation system settings, and developing personnel management schemes during emergencies. Additionally, evacuation simulations of a typical super tall case were conducted to validate how different elevator evacuation strategy modes enhance the case building’s evacuation efficiency using Pathfinder software.