RiMEA: A Way to Define a Standard for Evacuation Calculations

Since many years the RiMEA-Richtlinie (Richtlinie fur Mikroskopische Evakuierungs Analysen – Guideline for Microscopic Evacuation Analyses; RiMEA-Guideline) is a guideline for German-speaking authorities to check evacuation analyses of complex buildings. Based on the RiMEA-Guideline expert reports are written to ensure that the fundamental questions of an evacuation analysis are answered. Since April 2012, a German DIN Specification (like a pre-Standard) for evacuation calculations (DIN Spec 91284:2012-04) is available. This DIN Specification is based on the RiMEA-Guideline and was developed together with the RiMEA society (RiMEA e. V.). The paper will show how this DIN Specification (DIN Spec 91284:2012-04) was developed and what kind of requirements have to be fulfilled to transform the RiMEA-Guideline to this German DIN Specification. Additionally we will show what are the differences between this DIN Specification and the RiMEA-Guideline. Furthermore paper gives an overview about the actual RiMEA-Guideline and shows a short comparison between the RiMEA-Guideline and the IMO-Guideline MSC.1/Circ.1238 (Guidelines for Evacuation Analyses for New and Existing Passenger Ships). At the end we will give an overview about test cases, which are implemented in the RiMEA-Guideline.