Examining Pedestrian Flow through a Bottleneck

Abstract

In the field of fire prevention, the evacuation calculations provide the safety of the people staying in the building. This calculation can determine whether the fire evacuation of the building is feasible following the required safety level. For the evacuation calculations in the field of fire safety, it is necessary to know the unit width flow rate through a bottleneck (for example doors) in the evacuation route, which is used by the individuals (pedestrians). A state regulation determines the required fire safety level in Hungary, and a Fire Protection Safety Guideline contains the applicable unit width flow rate in the field of the evacuation calculation. The author in this paper presents and analyses the Hungarian and international literature related to this topic. During the research, the author performed measurements, the results are published in this paper. The purpose of the research was to determine the pedestrians’ unit width flow rate through a bottleneck, thereby proposing a value to use in the evacuation calculations. This research provides an opportunity to suggest the modification of the value of the unit width flow rate applied in the field of evacuation calculations, thus bringing the Fire Protection Safety Guideline closer to today’s conditions, while meeting the required safety level.