Analysis of Fire Evacuation Scenarios in Children's Cultural Centers

Abstract

Fires that occur in assembly buildings cause great loss of life and property. Children's cultural centers included in assembly buildings should also be evaluated within this context. Children create an occupant profile in cultural centers, and the internal environment has an excessive fire load, which poses a great risk of fires. In fire evacuation scenarios for children's cultural centers, it is necessary to create appropriate evacuation conditions. In this work, fire safety was analyzed over total evacuation time within occupant-based fire evacuation simulations of a children's cultural center located in Istanbul. The effect of the children's theatre hall located on the top floor on a building's total evacuation time has been studied. The effectiveness of alternative fire escape routes on evacuation time through different evacuation scenarios has been analyzed, and safe evacuation strategies for children's cultural centers have been revealed. As a result of this study, recommendations were presented within performance-based fire evacuation strategies in the design of children's cultural centers. As the future of the countries, fire safety design criteria have been created in children's cultural centers for children to be able to be safe in educational, cultural, and artistic environments.