Study on the Failure Probability of Occupant Evacuation with the Method of Monte Carlo Sampling

Occupant safety evacuation in fires is a critical issue in public safety field. The evacuation process is divided into several stages and each stage can be influenced by various uncertain factors. Some factors were studied in this paper based on the Monte Carlo approach. The safety level affected by different factors and the sensitivity of sampling size were analysed according to the failure probability model of occupant evacuation. The results show that safety level of occupant evacuation in buildings can be evaluated by the failure probability model. When the population density is more than 0.8 pers/m2, the failure probability goes up rapidly with the fire growth rate increasing. Whether the fire is large or not, the population density have a great impact on the evacuation. Then the influencing degree on failure probability of different parameters are changeable in various conditions. In addition, when the sample capacity is large enough, the Monte Carlo simulation can be deemed accurate.