The Process of Verification and Validation of Building Fire Evacuation Models

To date, there is no International standard on the methods and tests toassess the verification and validation (V&V) of building fire evacuation models, i.e., modeltesters adopt inconsistent procedures or tests designed for other model uses. Forinstance, the tests presented within the MSC/Circ.1238 Guidelines for evacuation analysisfor new and existing passenger ships provided by the International MaritimeOrganization are often employed for the V&V of models outside their original...
More Description

To date, there is no International standard on the methods and tests toassess the verification and validation (V&V) of building fire evacuation models, i.e., modeltesters adopt inconsistent procedures or tests designed for other model uses. Forinstance, the tests presented within the MSC/Circ.1238 Guidelines for evacuation analysisfor new and existing passenger ships provided by the International MaritimeOrganization are often employed for the V&V of models outside their original context ofuse (building fires instead of maritime applications). This document discusses the mainissues associated with the definition of a standard procedure for the V&V of building fireevacuation models. A review of the current procedures, tests (e.g. the MSC/Circ.1238Guidelines), and methods available in the literature to assess the V&V of buildingevacuation models is provided. The capabilities of building evacuation models areevaluated studying their five main core components, namely 1) Pre-evacuation time, 2)Movement and Navigation, 3) Exit usage, 4) Route availability and 5) Flow constraints. Aset of tests and recommendations about the verification of building evacuation models isproposed. Suggestions on simple qualitative validation tests are provided together withexamples of experimental data-sets suitable for the analysis of different core components.The uncertainties associated with evacuation modelling are discussed. In particular, amethod for the analysis of behavioural uncertainty (uncertainty due to the use ofdistributions or stochastic variables to simulate human behaviour in evacuationmodelling) is presented. The method consists of a set of convergence criteria based onfunctional analysis. The last part of this document presents a discussion on the definitionof the acceptance criteria for a standard V&V protocol.