Introducing fire in PathFinder simulations

[enronc]

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

[Charlie Thornton]

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.