Fire evacuation in high-rise buildings have difficulties in not only long-distance descent with few staircase and long evacuation time, but also the congestion management of evacuees. In addition, number of elderlies and mobility impairments acting in urban architectures have been rapidly increasing, however they have difficulty in evacuation in fire. For those problems, evacuation using elevators (EVs) is expected to be a promising solution. For example, the guideline of guided evacuation for mobility impairments using fire-fighter’s elevators (EVs) have been established and there are some example of evacuation strategy using shuttle EVs and intermediate refuge outside Japan. However, these examples still have many limitations that former one is only limited for a small number of mobility impairments and latter one requires a lot of staff to guide and control the evacuees using EVs. To solve those problems, the author proposed the evacuation strategy using ordinary-use EVs without discrimination of able-bodied people and mobility impairments with taking advantage of the large capacity and design characteristics of EVs which are planned for dairy transportation demands.

 Two types of high-rise buildings are examined; one is large floor area tenant office buildings which is almost the floor are tenant office. The other one is complex usage buildings such as consisted of retail, tenant office, and hotel. For office floors of both type of buildings, by using all the EV cars which servers the fire floor, EV cars can arrive at the fire floor about every 30 to 45 seconds. This can relief anxiety feeing and contribute to sober-minded entering EVs car or stay the floors without direction by staff. For evacuation of the occupants staying at the floors around the fire floor, EVs are insufficient to transport all of evacuees there. For those floors, guidance by signage to prioritize the mobility impairments to use EVs and to introduce staircases for able-bodied people is necessary. Staircases have large transportation capacity, however, it will tend to be crowded in simultaneous evacuation. To avoid this congestion, occupants at other zones where EV banks of the fire floor does not server are encouraged not to use staircases but to use EVs or stay their floors.

 Mixed usage high-rise buildings are usually planned with EV lobby floor and shuttle EVs from the ground floor. Besides, the floors where switch the usage of lower floors and upper floors tend to be amenity space, common space or roof garden. Those spaces can be used as temporary rest space or transferring floor with EVs and stairs. Especially when occupants are directed to use certain evacuation measure such as EVs or stairs depending on the allocation of fire floor, those evacuation spaces are effectively used because certain evacuation measures lead the evacuees to different evacuation spaces naturally. On the other hand, at EV lobby floor, maximum transportation capacity of shuttle EVs are usually smaller than that of local EVs which serve upper floors, therefore evacuees may excessively accumulate at the EV lobby floor. For EV evacuation planning, preliminary increment of EV capacity is necessary and the intensive allocation of staff from disaster control center is required.

In recent years, the need for accessibility for people with impairments has been growing. This trend requires event halls, such as arenas and multi-purpose venues, to install an increased number of wheelchair-user seats at various places. However, evacuation of wheelchair users is a difficult problem, especially while the crowd of healthy people also evacuate simultaneously. This paper presents the essence of a fire evacuation design and guidance program for wheelchair users in event halls by analyzing the decision process of an actual design example of a multi-purpose venue.

We examined how guests sleeping in a small-scale hostel, such as a vacation rental (minpaku), for which there has been increasing demand in recent years, perceive the voice alarm of wireless, interconnected smoke alarm detectors using three different alarm-sounding patterns. All participants were awakened by the alarm sounding in other rooms or their own rooms. However, two participants could not grasp the intention of the voice alarm clearly. Visitors’ comprehension of the alarm system is necessary in order for them to understand the intention of the alarm correctly and make the proper decisions regarding evacuation.

For fire evacuation safety in office buildings that include small rooms and where many occupants cannot directly see fire or smoke, fire alarms play a significant role in situational awareness and decision-making pertaining to evacuation. We conducted experiments to examine how individuals feel sound of fire alarms at different size of rooms using a mobile VR head-mounted display. We revealed the effect of early warning and evacuation-directive voice alarms installed at different places, e.g., a large office room and a small meeting room. In addition, we discussed the awareness process of occupants considering the configuration of smoke detection system.