Computer Simulation and Fire Drill in an Educational Building

Despite the evolution of computational models for evacuation simulations, there's still some doubt if they can generate accurate results. The objective is to analyze and compare the evacuation times of a fire drill and a computer simulation in an educational building. The method consisted of a fire drill with prior notice of a 4-floor building with classrooms in a public university. A computational model was developed for the same building and population using the evacuation simulation software Pathfinder. The results were that the evacuation times observed in the computer simulation were slightly lower than the times of the fire drill because people covered smaller distances due to the random distribution performed by the Pathfinder software and because in the drill some time was spent for the start of the movement toward the exit, which was estimated at around 30 seconds, while the software was configured for a pre-movement time equal to zero. The use of the computer simulation, therefore, proved to be an effective solution to replace the fire drill, since it allows for the identification of design failures and for the simulation of different scenarios in less time and without the need to mobilize people.