published_or_final_version / Architecture / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

在建築物應急疏散過程中，人員個體的路徑選擇將影響人群整體的疏散情況。空間認知研究表明，人們通過認知獲取空間知識，並在認知地圖的指引下完成尋徑任務，尋徑過程因人而異。應急疏散時，建築物內部空間時有變化，心理壓力和人群活動等都將影響人員的路徑選擇。然而，現有疏散模型通常採用路徑搜索演算法來類比人員的逃生路徑。該方法多以最優路徑為目標，難以類比真實的尋徑過程，不能反映個體間的尋徑差異。因此，準確模擬人員個體的尋徑行為是建築物疏散模擬的研究重點。通過類比不同人群的疏散情況，採取針對性的疏散引導，可以有效緩解擁堵，提高疏散效率。 / 鑒於以上背景，本文以模擬多層建築中不同人群的疏散情況為目標，基於尋徑行為理論，考慮人群活動和室內空間變化的影響，分析建築物疏散時各類人員的尋徑行為，從而構建基於認知智慧體的疏散模型，類比多層建築的人員疏散。研究從以下方面展開： / （1）研究尋徑行為理論，分析建築物疏散時人員尋徑的知識需求和尋徑策略，考慮人群活動對個體尋徑的影響，構建建築物應急疏散時人員尋徑的過程模型。 / （2）研究建築物內部空間的表達方法，提出針對人群疏散類比的建築物空間表達模型。該模型在宏觀上採用基於語義的方法構建了的考慮消防設施的動態空間拓撲結構，在微觀上採用網格模型表達建築物內部幾何空間。 / （3）基於尋徑過程模型和建築物空間表達模型，構建基於認知智慧體的建築物疏散模型。智慧體行為模型以尋徑過程模型為理論基礎，包括知識表達，尋徑模型，環境認知模型和运動模型。 / （4）以某大學教學樓為例，驗證模型的可行性。考慮日常教學和籌辦會議等典型情況下的人群構成，模擬各個人群在不同火災場景下的疏散過程。通過對比出口使用率，分析不同人群的疏散差異。 / 研究結果表明，本文構建的建築應急物疏散模型能夠類比多層建築中各類人員的尋徑行為，反應不同人群的疏散差異，模擬結果更為合理，可以有效輔助人群疏散管理。 / In building evacuation, escape route choice of individual evacuees will potentially affect the overall evacuation performance. Studies in spatial cognition suggest that people find their ways based on spatial knowledge developed from environmental perception. Therefore, people with different level of spatial knowledge may vary tremendously in wayfinding performance. In the emergency situation, the building’s internal structure may change as some built-in facilities are activated. In the meantime, people’s psychic stress and crowd dynamics will significantly affect evacuees’ route selection. However, in most evacuation models, evacuees are simulated as particles that automatically follow the optimal escape route, and consequently without taking into account individual differences in wayfinding. Therefore, modelling individualized wayfinding is a critical issue in building evacuation simulation. It is expected that evacuation simulations regarding different types of evacuees would benefit the evacuation management targeted at a particular group of people. / Given the aforementioned background, the goal of this research is to model evacuees’ route choice in a plausible way by taking into account the cognitive process of human wayfinding and hereby perform evacuation simulations of different groups of evacuees in a multi-level building. In order to reach this goal, the following studies have been conducted: / (1) Based on literature studies on human wayfinding, a process model of wayfinding has been established. With regard to the emergency situation of building evacuation, typical wayfinding tasks, knowledge requirement, individual wayfinding strategies and influence of surrounding crowds are elaborated and incorporated into the process model. / (2) A novel approach to represent the dynamic spatial environments is developed to facilitate the evacuation simulation of multi-level buildings. At the macro level, a semantics-based model is established to represent the topological structure of building interiors which can be timely updated according to the status of fire safety facilities during emergency evacuation. At the micro level, a grid graph-based model is adopted to represent the geometry of building layout in order to facilitate the simulation of two-dimensional human movement. / (3) On the basis of the process model of wayfinding and the representation of dynamic spatial environment of building interiors, a computational model is developed using cognizing agent for building evacuation simulation. The architecture of the cognizing agent consists of knowledge representation, wayfinding model, environmental perception model and local movement model. / (4) The proposed model is verified and applied for the evacuation simulation of a university building. A series of evacuation simulations have been conducted in different fire scenarios with respect to the particular groups of evacuees in school days and conference days. Based on statistical analyses of exit utilization, evacuation performance of different groups of evacuees has been discussed and compared. / It has been proven that the proposed evacuation model, which incorporates the cognitive perspectives of human wayfinding, is capable of simulating a variety of route choice of different types of evacuees during the evacuation of a multi-level building. The model can be used to simulate the evacuation of different groups of evacuees, and thus provide more realistic basis for building evacuation management. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Tan, Lu. / Thesis (Ph.D.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2014. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-148). / Abstracts also in Chinese.

With its destabilizing shifts away from mercantilism toward liberal economics, early nineteenth-century Britain generated an increasingly powerful class of technocrats, including architects and builders, in design and construction. This burgeoning professional group involved in architecture, planning, and building directed processes, products, and technologies of construction toward maintaining societal order. In doing so, they cemented their social hierarchical status. Following abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and emancipation from 1833-1838, architects and builders had to adapt their techniques of communication and labor management, and adjust their building practices to material and technological innovations. In contrast to heroic narratives of industrial progress and optimism that conventionally dominated histories of modern architecture, figures of apprehension, anxiety, and anticipation more appropriately encapsulate the consequential events of this period. Through empirical analyses of small-scale techniques of drawing and building, this dissertation renders the general transition from rigid, mercantilist arrangements aligned with economies of enslavement toward ideologies of free trade, increasingly widespread wage labor regimes, and liberalism more broadly, into legible, tangible forms. Using as heuristics architectural technologies for preempting, mitigating, and suppressing fires—planning, constructional assemblies, mechanisms, materials, regulations, financing, and legislation—I demonstrate that preventing undesirable occurrences governed a heterogeneous array of activities. These ranged from English architects' professionalization initiatives, to plans for evacuating people from and extinguishing fires in theaters, to labor management in West Indian military outposts, to fire insurance offices that spread their risk profiles by indemnifying Caribbean sugar plantations beginning in the late eighteenth century. Thus capital and uncertainty went hand in hand as elements in conveying wealth, as architects and others involved in building at once made risk both fungible and material.

In this research, the issue of evacuating people from large public facilities has been studied. The focus has mostly been on the evacuation of hospitals. For the hospital evacuation planner, it is necessary to know how long it would take to evacuate the premises. To approach this problem, the entire evacuation process has been modeled as a queuing situation using a simulation language called SLAM. The evacuation time is affected by many variables such as the number of elevators in the building, the number of ambulances available to transport patients, and the number of staff available to assist in moving patients. All these variables have been incorporated in the model as servers of the queuing process and the simulation is carried out. The model has been applied to a case study of the evacuation of the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals in Richmond, VA. The sensitivity of the model to different system parameters has been studied and the relationships have been plotted. / Master of Science