The National Research Council Canada (NRC) and Public Works and
Government Services Canada (PWGSC) pooled their resources to test the
effectiveness of a new fire safety system at a two-tower, 11-storey
federal office building in downtown Ottawa, ON. The C. D. Howe Building
was selected for this study where an unannounced evacuation drill was
carried out under emergency lighting conditions. An experimental design
was established for the four identical, windowless, stairwells of the
building. Twelve minutes later, thousands of workers were safely out of
the high-rise.
The point of the drill was to study the use of photoluminescent
material (PLM) in the stairs, signs, floors, and handrails in various
stairwells of the building. PLM glows in the dark and can help occupants
safely evacuate a building without light or filled with dense smoke. The
material stores energy from natural and artificial light and becomes
highly visible in darkness. Until now, different installations of
photoluminescent way-guidance systems had never been tested with large
groups of people during an evacuation. During the surprise fire drill,
employees were videotaped descending the stairs to help the research
team measure their movement, speed, and ability to find destinations.
As one of the largest building owners in Canada, PWGSC has a vested
interest in research into human behaviour during an evacuation. With
thousands of employees working in hundreds of buildings across the
country, the development of improved safety guidelines for evacuations
is a priority.
Video cameras were used to gather behavioural and time data on the
floors and in the four stairwells during the evacuation. The
evacuees' behaviour, the speed of their movement, and their
subjective appraisal of the material were encouraging.
"From the results of an earlier evacuation study in 1998, we
knew that photoluminescent wayguidance systems had potential to improve
occupant safety in life-threatening situations," explains Garnet
Strong, director general of professional and technical programs of
PWGSC's Real Property Branch. "The objective of this project
was to find an optimum PLM configuration in order to develop a standard
installation practice, hopefully leading to a national standard."
NRC fire researchers have built a world-class reputation for their
work in human behaviour during fire emergencies. They were invited to
participate in the investigations following the World Trade Center bomb
attack in 1993, where thousands of evacuees had to descend in stairwells
of total darkness. Following their recommendations, PLM was installed in
all the stairwells of the complex and proved invaluable during the 2001
attacks.
The NRC/PWGSC research team has analyzed the data collected during
the Ottawa office building fire drill and results will be used to
establish federal standards for PLM installations that are efficient in
guiding occupants out of high-rise buildings.
For a full copy of the research report entitled, "Evaluation
of the Effectiveness of Different Photoluminescent Stairwell
Installations for the Evacuation of Office Building Occupants,"
visit http://irc.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/pubs/rr/rr232/.
Reprinted with permission from Doing Business, Public Works and
Government Services Canada
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