Study of historical evacuation drill data combining regression analysis and dimensionless numbers

The time needed to evacuate a building depends on many factors. Some are related to people’s behavior, while others are related to the physical characteristics of the building. This paper analyzes the historical data of 47 evacuation drills in 15 different university buildings, both academic and residential, involving more than 19 000 persons. We propose the study of the data presented using a dimensionless analysis and statistical regression in order to give a prediction of the ratio between exit time and the number of people evacuated. The results obtained show that this approach could be a useful tool for comparing buildings of this type, and that it represents a promising research topic which can also be extended to other types of buildings.