Experimental study on determinants of the evacuation performance in the super-high rise building.

The stairwell is the main path for emergency evacuation of people in super high-rise buildings, so revealing the movement characteristics in the stairwell based on experimental data is the basis for controlling the evacuation process of super high-rise buildings to ensure the safety of the crowd. Here, an evacuation experiment is carried out in Shanghai Tower with a vertical height of 583 m, which is the second tallest building in the world. The results show that pedestrians would set a "suitable velocity" for themselves according to the target height distance, and farther distance will result in lower "suitable velocity". The evidence is that the group of participants with a 9.63% higher traveling height spend a 16.39% longer evacuation time, yet within each group the velocity do not decrease with the increase of the moving distance. Furthermore, crowding in stairwell determines whether pedestrians can achieve the "suitable velocity", and the "suitable velocity" of women or older people is smaller than men or younger people in the same scenario. The local velocity and vertical velocity of different groups, genders and ages are classified and analyzed. A new measurement method for crowd density and then the fundamental diagram of the velocity-density relation in super high-rise building is presented. These results can provide basic data for the design of emergency evacuation facilities and formulation of emergency plan for super high-rise buildings.