A new approach for modelling circulation in secondary schools

Even though there have been many reports of circulation routes that are overcrowded and difficult to manage in secondary schools, there are still very few quantitative means used within the design industry for assessing circulation provisions. Arguably, school circulation design remains based on a combination of architect/stakeholder experience and minimum width/area recommendations contained within guidance documents. To make advances in this area, this paper proposes a valuable new modelling approach for school circulation using a combination of school survey data and computational modelling. The approach is successfully applied to predicting peak flow rates and congestion levels within an existing secondary school and is also shown to be a practical method for application on new-build projects.