Coupling of airflow and pollutant dispersion models with evacuation planning algorithms for building system controls.

Zhang J.S., Mohan C.K., Varshney P., Isik C., Mehrotra K., Wang S., Gao Z., Rajagopalan R.
Bibliographic info:
Ashrae 2005 Winter meeting, technical and symposium papers, Orlando, February 2005

A mathematical formulation was developed including an objective function that minimizes the cumulative exposure of occupants to pollutants under the constraints of pollutant dispersion pattern, evacuation paths, and their capacities. The formulation included airflow and pollutant dispersion models and optimization algorithms for evacuation planning. The formulation was applied to two example cases. Assuming that a simulated pollutant (SF6) was released at the HVAC intake or inside a particular zone of the building, simulations were conducted for
(1) a normal mode of HVAC operation,
(2) an intuitive pollutant dispersion control mode, and
(3) an intelligent control mode in which the feedback from the evacuation planning model was used. Simulations results show that
(1) an evacuation plan obtained based on the predicted pollutant dispersion patterns can have significant advantage over the intuitive "shortest path to the exit" approach
(2) the pollutant dispersion control stratefies simulated are effective in reducing the occupants' exposure.

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