Hello everybody,
I want to simulate "artificially" the effects of a tunnel fire in PathFinder. I have the PathFinder evacuation times in case of simulation without fire, I have real data and results from other models with and without fire.
- Is a change on the delay time and walking speed the only way to simulate the effect of fire (reducing visibility, toxic gases effects, etc..)?
- Is in PathFinder possible in some way to create a progressive reduction of the walking speed or a certain point in space or time where the occupants can slow down their speed?


For Charlie: Are you thinking in the next versions of PathFinder to introduce FED or other parametres about fire effect on occupants?

Thank you in advance,
Enrico

It's difficult to integrate anything other than the initial delay time with fire data at the moment.  Occupants get a particular maximum speed at the beginning of the simulation and (other than the positions of the occupants) the environment is static from start to finish.  I want to build in a queuing system similar to Figure 4 (and Figure 5 for that matter) in the SFPE's human behavior in fire guide.  Unfortunately, these good "high-level planning" features are going to have to wait until we get some other things working a bit better.

We're definitely thinking about integrating fire data.  That was the purpose of this thing from day one.  I think the next version will be more about getting the occupants to move around a bit better and make reasonable door choices.  You probably shouldn't take my word for it though, I tend to fixate on bug fixes and the bosses say, "I want elevators!"  We'll see what happens.