Evacuation in Buildings Based on BIM: Taking a Fire in a University Library as an Example

As a typical public place, a university library has a large collection of books with heavy fire load, dense population, and large flow of people. The situation of safe evacuation in case of fire is very serious. This study utilizes Revit, Pyrosim, and Pathfinder software to research evacuation of a university library. First, a Building Information Modeling (BIM) is constructed based on Revit software in 1:1 scale. Second, the evacuation passage with the highest utilization rate was determined through Pathfinder software. According to the “most unfavorable principle,” the location near it was assumed to be where the fire occurred. Pyrosim software was used to determine the smoke spread, visibility, CO concentration, temperature, and other conditions at each stairway exit in case of fire. Finally, the evacuation situation is compared with that after man-made route planning. The results indicate that evacuation exits 1#, 7#, 13#, 19#, and 23# have the highest utilization rate. The safe evacuation time was 739.275 s, which was shortened to 638.025 s after man-made route planning, a 13.67% increase in evacuation efficiency. Evacuation efficiency can be significantly improved by increasing broadcast guidelines, adding signs, widening staircases, and other optimization suggestions, which can provide reference for the study of evacuation effects in public places and the improvement of the layout of public facilities.