• Title/Summary/Keyword: efficiency of disaster prevention

Search Result 130, Processing Time 0.026 seconds

Analysis of University Cafeteria Safety Based on Pathfinder Simulation

  • Zechen Zhang;Jaewook Lee;Hasung Kong
    • International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
    • /
    • v.16 no.2
    • /
    • pp.209-217
    • /
    • 2024
  • Recent years have seen a notable increase in fire incidents in university cafeterias, yet the social attention to these occurrences remains limited. Despite quick responses to these incidents preventing loss of life, the need for large-scale evacuation in such high foot traffic areas can cause significant disruptions, economic losses, and panic among students. The potential for stampedes and unpredictable damage during inadequate evacuations underscores the importance of fire safety and evacuation research in these settings. Previous studies have explored evacuation models in various university environments, emphasizing the influence of environmental conditions, personal characteristics, and behavioral patterns on evacuation efficiency. However, research specifically focusing on university cafeterias is scarce. This paper addresses this gap by employing Pathfinder software to analyze fire spread and evacuation safety in a university cafeteria. Pathfinder, an advanced emergency evacuation assessment system, offers realistic 3D simulations, crucial for intuitive and scientific evacuation analysis. The studied cafeteria, encompassing three floors and various functional areas, often exceeds a capacity of 1500 people, primarily students, during peak times. The study includes constructing a model of the cafeteria in Pathfinder and analyzing evacuation scenarios under different fire outbreak conditions on each floor. The paper sets standard safe evacuation criteria (ASET > RSET) and formulates three distinct evacuation scenarios, considering different fire outbreak locations and initial evacuation times on each floor. The simulation results reveal the impact of the fire's location and the evacuation preparation time on the overall evacuation process, highlighting that fires on higher floors or longer evacuation preparation times tend to reduce overall evacuation time.In conclusion, the study emphasizes a multifaceted approach to improve evacuation safety and efficiency in educational settings. Recommendations include expanding staircase widths, optimizing evacuation routes, conducting regular drills, strengthening command during evacuations, and upgrading emergency facilities. The use of information and communication technology for managing emergencies is also suggested. These measures collectively form a comprehensive framework for ensuring safety in educational institutions during fire emergencies.

Evacuation Safety Assessment of Elderly and Children in High-rise Hotels in China

  • Yuanyuan Zhang;Hasung Kong
    • International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
    • /
    • v.16 no.2
    • /
    • pp.227-236
    • /
    • 2024
  • Chinese high-rise hotels are large in size, densely populated, and have a lot of combustibles. Once a fire occurs, the fire and smoke spread rapidly, and once a fire accident occurs, it is easy to cause a large number of deaths. Fires have a greater impact on special populations such as elderly and children who move slowly. At present, research mainly focuses on the impact of high-rise building structures on evacuation consequences, but there is very little research on the safety evacuation consequences of elderly people and children in high-rise hotels. This paper focuses on the elderly and children living in high-rise hotels in China. We studied three scenarios in which the elderly and children were placed on high floors, middle floors, and low floors. For the above three scenarios, use pathfinder software for simulation, According to the simulation results, when the elderly and children are mainly concentrated in the lower floors (2nd and 3rd floors), the evacuation time is the shortest, 147 seconds. The evacuation time for the elderly and children on the middle floor (6th and 7th floors) is the longest, at 191.5 seconds. Compared to being placed on high floors, safely staying on low floors for all ages reduces evacuation time by 44.5 seconds and improves evacuation efficiency by 23.24%. The final safety evacuation plan is that in daily safety management, hotels should arrange elderly and children occupants on lower floors as much as possible to reduce the total evacuation time and improve personnel evacuation efficiency. This has great guiding significance in the safety management of high-rise hotels.

A Study on Step Up-Down AC-DC Converter with DCM-ZVS of High Performance (고성능 DCM-ZVS 스텝 업-다운 AC-DC 컨버터에 관한 연구)

  • Kwak, Dong-Kurl
    • Journal of IKEEE
    • /
    • v.16 no.4
    • /
    • pp.335-342
    • /
    • 2012
  • This paper is studied on a new DCM-ZVS step up-down AC-DC converter of high performance, that is, high system efficiency and power factor correction (PFC). The switching devices in the proposed converter are operated by soft switching technique using a new quasi-resonant circuit, and are driven with discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) according to pulse width modulation (PWM). The quasi-resonant circuit uses a step up-down inductor and a loss-less snubber capacitor. The proposed converter with DCM also simplifies the requirement of control circuits and reduces the number of control components. The input AC current waveform in the proposed converter becomes a quasi-sinusoidal waveform proportional to the magnitude of input AC voltage under constant switching frequency. As a result, the proposed converter obtains low switching power loss and high efficiency, and its input power factor is nearly in unity. The validity of the analytical findings is confirmed by some computer simulation results and experimental results.

A Study on Partial Resonant AC-DC Chopper of Power Factor Correction (역률개선형 부분공진 AC-DC 초퍼에 관한 연구)

  • Kwak, Dong-Kurl
    • Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
    • /
    • v.15 no.3
    • /
    • pp.19-25
    • /
    • 2008
  • In this paper, author proposes a novel step-up AC-DC chopper operated with power factor correction(PFC) and with high efficiency. The proposed chopper behaves with discontinuous current control(DCC) of input current. The input current waveform in the proposed chopper is got to be a discontinuous sinusoid form in proportion to magnitude of ac input voltage under the constant duty cycle switching. Therefore, the input power factor is nearly unity and the control method is simple. In the general DCC chopper, the switching devices are turned-on with the zero current switching, but turn-off of the switching devices is switched at current maximum value. To achieve a soft switching of the switching rum-off, the proposed chopper is used a new partial resonant circuit. The result is that the switching loss is very low and the efficiency of chopper is high.

  • PDF

Study on Stagnation Factors Analysis and Improvement Methods through an Evacuation Experiment (피난실험을 통한 피난시간 지연요인 분석과 개선방안에 관한 연구)

  • Han, Woon-Hee
    • Fire Science and Engineering
    • /
    • v.32 no.2
    • /
    • pp.57-66
    • /
    • 2018
  • The most urgent requirement in the event of disaster and fire in a skyscraper is to establish a system that enables people inside to evacuate safely. Hence, a practical direction needs to give evacuees confidence in the evacuation by reducing the psychological anxiety caused by the relatively large number of people inside and at the same time, the physically prolonged evacuation travel line. Evacuation tests with large numbers of people were conducted three times to solve these challenges and identify phenomena and issues that occurred during the experiment. The results revealed the factors that could cause a delay in evacuation and suggested improvements. The study results of this paper are as follows. First, a recent fire at a multipurpose high-rise resulted in a number of casualties due to a lack of experience with the disaster prevention system. To prevent such cases from occurring in advance, adaptability was achieved by conducting evacuation tests. Second, the data collected in the evacuation simulation statistics and the actual escape drills were compared and analyzed. Third, in the evacuation experiment, a large number of people could not participate in the experiment. The reasons for not participating were analyzed and their impact on the actual evacuation time was confirmed. Fourth, equipment aids were purchased to establish the optimal response measure to the causes of a delay in escape time and the standards for ensuring the safety of the evacuee were specified by developing improvements to minimize the evacuation delay time through comparative before and after analysis of the experiment. These results can be used for fire safety control of skyscrapers to improve the efficiency of evacuation.

Experimental Study on Moisture Content According to Addition of Surfactants (계면활성제 첨가에 따른 함수율에 관한 실험적 연구)

  • Kim, Nam-Kyun;Rie, Dong-Ho
    • Fire Science and Engineering
    • /
    • v.29 no.2
    • /
    • pp.79-83
    • /
    • 2015
  • The fire accident is a representative type of disaster that can largely impact on business. Therefore, precautionary measures and rapid initial response is very important when a disaster occurs. The storage of porous combustibles is inevitable in coal yard, plywood processing industry, and others that are currently operating. Initial fire fighting of fire and identifying the ignition point in such a porous combustible storage space are so difficult that if the initial response is failed, being led to deep-seated fire, surface fire is likely to result in secondary damage. In addition, deep-seated fire can cause personal injuries and property damage due to a large amount of toxic gases and reignition. Therefore damage reduction measures is required around the storage space to handle a porous flammable. Improving the penetration performance of the concentration of the surfactant is carried out as underlying study, which is about an deep-seated fire extinguishing efficiency augmentation when using wetting agents. The porous materials used in the experiments is radiata pine wood flour, which occupies more than 75% of the domestic wood market. Fire fighting water is selected as Butyl Di Glycol (BDG), which is being used for infiltration extinguishing agent, and the experiment was carried out by producing a standard solution. The experiment was carried out on the basis of the Deep-Seated Fire Test of NFPA 18. The amount of watering, porous material to the internal amount of penetration, and runoff measurement out of the porous material was conducted. According to experimental results, as the surface tension is reduced, the surfactant concentration macroscopic penetration rate decreases, but infiltration to a porous material is shown to have growth characteristics.

Investigation on the operational state of the public food waste treatment facilities and suggestions on their efficient operational management (음식물류폐기물 공공 자원화시설의 운영실태 조사를 통한 처리공정별 효율적인 운영방안 검토)

  • Jang, Yun-Hyeok;Park, Joon-Seok;Kim, Joung-Dae;Phae, Chae-Gun
    • Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
    • /
    • v.18 no.1
    • /
    • pp.47-56
    • /
    • 2010
  • At present, 265 national food waste recycling facilities have been operated by public facilities 95 and private facilities 160. it has continuously installed a food waste treatment facility from 1997. The government set up and implemented guidelines and inspection standards for the installation and operation of the facilities. However, unclear detailed examination items, designs and process standards for the installation procedures of the facilities are causing problems due to the unskilled operation management system, decrease in efficiency and defects of a facility. This study conducted mail and site surveys on 95 public food waste recycling facilities that it suggest the ways to operate facilities which minimize problems. At the result of investigation, a pre-treatment facility was not installed 2 systems(2 inputting facilities) and hopper covers and food was overloaded. also the transportation amount was excessive. In case of a main treatment facility, the secondary environmental pollution was caused by inexperienced operation and the efficiency of the facility was reduced due to excessive input of food. also the operation management standards of the facilities were inappropriate. The odor and food waste leachate treatment facility is investigated as problems that are unskilled operation, lack of regular inspection and inappropriate capacity of the treatment facility. Based on the problems found through the investigation, it suggested some ways of efficient operation. this study might contribute to minimize mistakes and defects and improve the efficiency of install and operation course of food waste recycling facilities through finding.

The Set of Performance Evaluation Index of Remodeling in Rural Housing for Residential Environments Improvement (주거환경개선을 위한 농촌주택 리모델링 성능평가지표 설정에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Hye-Lan;Lim, Chang-Su;Kim, Eun-Ja;Hong, Kwang-Woo;Moon, Ho-Gyeong
    • Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
    • /
    • v.20 no.1
    • /
    • pp.1-12
    • /
    • 2014
  • Living environments in rural area have become deteriorated rapidly. Increase of aging population, decline in agricultural income, polarization of wealth in rural community due to rural returners have caused severe decline and imbalance of living environments in rural area. Responding to this circumstances, governments currently develop projects for improving living environments focusing on individual housing which were excluded from governmental supports because those had been regarded as private property. Nevertheless, there are still some gaps and problems in evaluating the quality of living environment and suggesting effective solutions. It would be because standards and guidelines of the projects have been based on urban housing system. In order to support the implementation of the projects, this research has developed an index for evaluating and monitoring the quality of living environments in rural area. By applying Delphi method, the index has been created in four categories of 'security', 'convenience', 'comfortability', and 'durability' 'Security' consists of structural safety, crime, disaster, accident prevention. 'Convenience' includes three divisions of living, traffic, farm working. 'Comfortability' is divided into sanitation, indoor environments, and aesthetic appreciation. Lastly, 'durability' has four divisions of energy conservation, environmental friendliness, efficiency, and economics. Each sub-division also has different items from three to twelves. In the case of an index for performance evaluation, items have been derived from energy conservation(6-items), and environmental friendliness(7-items). Items developed as an index for evaluating rural living environments in this research might be good background information for remodeling project in rural housing development.

Study on the Pyrolysis Kinetics of Mixture of RDF and Carbonized Sludge with Thermogravimetric Analysis (RDF와 탄화슬러지 혼합물의 열중량 및 열동역학 특성 연구)

  • Sun, Jian Feng;Hwang, Hyeon Uk;Kim, Myung Gyun;Nzioka, Antony Mutua;Lee, Chang Soo;Kim, Young Ju
    • Journal of Environmental Science International
    • /
    • v.25 no.2
    • /
    • pp.281-288
    • /
    • 2016
  • After analyzing of heating value of four kinds of RDF, the RDF-D has the highest heating value, was chosen to be mixed with carbonized sludge by different ratio. The 85%:15% ratio, which has the highest efficiency, was analyzed with thermogravimetric and pyrolysis kinetics. Applying of Kissinger method, activation energy was obtained from slope which is calculated from relation of ln(${\beta}/T^2{_m}$) and $1/T_m$. The kinetic parameters obtained from Kissinger method were 46.06 kJ/mol of RDF, 55.99 kJ/mol of carbonized sludge and 40.68 kJ/mol of mixture of RDF and carbonized sludge. The mixture of RDF and carbonized sludge has the lowest activation energy and frequency factor, during thermal decomposition reaction it has the slowest reaction rate and needs the lowest energy. Although activation energy with pyrolysis of RDF was irregularly scattered, it showed that activation energy was stabilized by co-pyrolysis of RDF and additives(Carbonized Sludge).

Research of Sea Food Wastewater Treatment using Membrane Filter (Membrane Filter를 이용한 수산물 가공폐수처리에 대한 연구)

  • Han, Dong-Joon
    • Journal of environmental and Sanitary engineering
    • /
    • v.22 no.4
    • /
    • pp.119-130
    • /
    • 2007
  • Sea food wastewater including high concentration of organics and nutrients is hard to treat stably by established traditional activated sludge process. This research is aimed to obey more and more of strengthened the law and to secure stable effluents by using advanced treatment process applied membrane filter in aeration tank for treatment of wastewater from marine products. It must maintain pH of influent over 6.0 to keep up stably biological sludge of advanced treatment process. At 38hr of HRT, removal rates of TBOD and TCOD were 99.9% and 99.4% respectively and TSS also removed with high efficiency. Most organics in the effluent was constituted with soluble type materials, it caused that membrane filter installed aeration tank should remove minute suspended particles. The reactor was operated well to get stable treatment results for operation period, in spite of high loading of organics like that $0.67{\sim}1.67\;kgTBOD/m^3/day$ of organics loading and $0.10{\sim}0.21\;kgBOD_5/kgMLSS/day$ of F/M ratio. At $36{\sim}48hr$ of HRT, removal rates of T-N and T-P were $89.7{\sim}90.7%\;and\;91.5{\sim}96.0%$ respectively. It means this treatment process also work to remove nutrients of high concentration. Upon investigation of advanced treatment's operation factors, optimum SRT was about 30days and average SNR that showed tendency to increase according to increase water temperature was calculated 0.014 gN/g MLVSS/d. SDNR was risen in conformity to increase F/M ratio of Non-aeration tank and investigated as $0.038{\sim}0.051\;gN/gMLVSS/d$.