Simulation Based Passengers Emergency Evacuation Study for a Double Decker Train Coach

With the increased passengers in a public transport, it has become necessary to ensure their safety against any possible threats. Public transport emergency evacuation planning and management strategies aims at reducing the risk to passenger lives from any eventualities. The main activity under emergency planning is to assess the time required to safely evacuate the passengers from transport facilities including vehicles. Practical experiments are difficult to conduct as they involve risk to people involved as well as it is difficult to evoke conditions pertaining to emergency evacuation. In that case, modelling through simulation can be a good alternative. In this study the effectiveness of vehicle designs under emergency situations are evaluated for double decker train coaches introduced by Indian Railways recently. The double dockers are capable of carrying 120 passengers in a single coach. This makes them more economical than their counterparts and, in the future, they can be seen as a means of daily commute. In this research study the simulation of passenger movement in emergency and smoke dispersions are modelled using Pathfinder® and Pyrosim®. Through simulations the study is able to estimate the time required to for save evacuation of all the passengers. This study able to develop the matrix for Required Safe Egress Time (RSET) and the Available Safe Egress Time (ASET) for various conditions. It is observed that the time required for all the passengers to evacuate under normal conditions is less as compared to the time they will need to evacuate under emergency conditions. This can be due to the crowding that is observed at the exits. It is found that factors like door width, number of doors and their position and passenger heterogeneity has a significant impact on the Total Evacuation Time (TET).