A system thinking approach for evacuation during fire incidents considering systems dynamics

The ability to safely evacuate a burning structure is the most important factor in building safety. An essential prerequisite is that the building’s fire safety features permit independent and adequate fire reaction actions from its inhabitants. The laws as they are now don’t always seem to give the assistance that those trapped in burning buildings need. As the evacuation process involves several stages, it is a complex heterogeneous system. A scientific and effective emergency evacuation strategy is critical to increasing incident response capability i.e., better risk analysis of the system. System Dynamics emphasize strategic decision-making and feedback to the complex system. This paper anchors the construction of a System framework for the evacuation of buildings during a fire. The framework includes the fire evacuation process as a whole with the different factors affecting the evacuation process. These factors in each and every process have been used to develop different feedback loops using the system dynamics process. These feedback loops help in deducting out Dynamic prediction for inculcating the risk in the system. System dynamics helps in understanding the parameter of a complex heterogeneous system for superior risk analysis.