Evacuation Modeling Of An Historical Casino In Case Of Fire

How to adequate a casino sited in an historical building to the modern fire prevention roles? How to reduce the interventions on a listed building without compromising safety in case of fire? This presentation describes the different solutions adopted in a real case.

Three different strategies were followed: reduce the fire growth rate using materials classified for fire reaction, implement the safety management level developing an internal trained team, and verifying the occupant egress in case of fire with Computational Fluids Dynamics (CFD) models.

Gaming halls often have significant crowds, which can lead to excessive exit times in the event of an emergency egress.

The objective of this study is to assess the egress conditions in a casino in case of fire, ensuring that safety conditions are maintained for the time required for evacuation (Required Safety Egress Time - RSET).

The time available has been calculated using CFD software (FDS) capable of describing fire and smoke spread and the combustion products. The ratio between the available time (Available Safety Egress Time - ASET) and the required time (RSET) describes the safety conditions of the activity.

For the modeling of the exodus, the Pathfinder software was used to describe the movement parameters of the occupants.