New Products
buildingEXODUS Ver.5
Evacuation Analysis／Fire Analysis Software
Price: US$3,155 〜(New)　Release: December, 2011
　Introduction
building EXODUS Ver.5, software used for evacuation simulation and crowd analysis developed by Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG) from University of Greenwich will be released. This new version is designed to simulate and analyze evacuation of large numbers of people from a variety of enclosed environment including the next generation architectural environment, enabling engineers to run simulation of pedestrian circulation in normal times and in the event of an emergency more flexibly within the same confines of their desktop.

building EXODUS is considered to be one of the world’s leading design tool specialized to simulate evacuation of crowd from any types of building. Since its license was first sold in 1996, the software package is being used by engineering consultancies, architectural firms, research centers, regulatory agencies, police and fire departments, and universities in 37 countries in designing and analyzing evacuation situations in heavily populated buildings/places such as subway stations, skyscrapers, hospitals, shopping malls, schools, museums, air port terminals, stadiums, venue for an outdoor event, etc.

building EXODUS is widely used to model efficient evacuation and crowd movement in both existing and new buildings. Recently, the software was used in fire/evacuation modeling research on the venue of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing (Bird’s Nest) (Picture 1), investigation of Love Parade stampede and 9-11 WTC, and for the Statue of Liberty renovation.

Picture 1 The venue of the 2008 Summer
Olympics in Beijing (Bird’s Nest)		 Picture 2 Statue of Liberty
renovation

Academic license price revision
To satisfy our valuable customers’ request, we have decided to revise the discount price applicable to a purchase of 10 or more licenses at the same time.
Please take advantage of this great opportunity.
　　New function of new version
"buildingEXODUS Ver.5" newly released became possible to apply to the more advanced analysis by the new features included that was enhanced and added based on a lot of requests etc. as shown in Table 1. The new features are introduced below.

Chart 1　building EXODUS Ver.5 New Function
Device Modeling
Transit Nodes
"Pass node" is a single new node to the stairs, the escalator, the moving sidewalk, the passage, and the measurement gate (Figure 1) which took the concept of this "Street node", and it came to be able to model the movement of "Device" for the escalator, the moving sidewalk, and the measurement gate.

Figure 1　Measurement gate (Rotary)
Behaviors Capabilities
Device Behaviors
Either of "Device" can be selected, and the action that selects either "Stop" or "Walk" be simulated on the escalator when the escalator and the stairs are in the vicinity by setting "Device action" as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2　Selection of escalator and stairs
Queuing
In shopper's "Queue" such as waiting for the cash register, the setting of such as the delay of service time, the specification of the row shape and others crossing through the queue is possible.

Signage/Itineraries
The interaction of the person and the sign to recognize the signs and then act using the information can be simulated by setting "Signs".

"Route" can be set by specifying the task on the route and new tasks such as Form Group, Leave Group, Waiting, Delay, Remove, and Find via Signage were introduced.

The action that passes alternate route (Path B) that usually avoids the obstacle of usual route (Path A) and is guided by sign (S1,S2,S3) can be simulated by setting "Sign/Route" as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3　Signage/Itinerary(Path)
Social Movement
The group interaction to come close the group member by adjusting the walking rate and to convert the route in the communication process between the members has been enhanced functionally.

Software Usability
Although figure 4 is an example of the action control dialog of the rule base, the item was arranged by dialog's having become a tab switch type, and it became easy for users to access from the former version.

The software architecture of "EXODUS" has applied to the latest "EXODUS" function and the hardware function. For example, it's applied to "EXODUS script file" which can be set even in complex scenario by command line, "64 bit OS" which is effective at the time of large scale simulating.
Figure 4　Tab switch dialog(Action control)
　New features under development for the next version
The "EXODUS" development team is continuously advancing development aiming at the release of "building EXODUS" in the future. There is already most prototypes for the function developing shown in Table 2, and it's planed to be released as a new feature for the next release.

Table2　buildingEXODUS function under development
Elevator
Figure 5 is a case that investigates the shelter strategy in case 4 rooms in the stairway and 32 elevators (It is assumed eight elevators for 1 group, and four groups were arranged.) are used for 7,840 people in the building.

Figure 5　Elevator
Fire/Evacuation modeling with a mixture of fine, coarse, and continuous nodes
Figure 6 is an example of fire/evacuation modeling using a mixture of fine, coarse, and continuous nodes. Thanks to the improvement of PC performance, EXODUS model can not only run evacuation simulation of large numbers of people but also visualize them using continuous nodes.
Figure 6　Fire/Evacuation modeling with a mixture
of fine, coarse, and continuous nodes
　(Black：Coarse nodes, Green：Fine nodes, White：Continuous nodes)
　 　Finally
FORUM8 not only sells buildingEXODUS but also maritime EXODUS, fire/evacuation modeling tool tailored to maritime environments, and SMARTFIRE, an advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) fire simulation software in Japan and China as a local distributor. FORUM8 also provide technical support including an assistance in modeling based on the requirements of our users. Please look out for it.
(Up&Coming '12　 Spring Issue)
Back
Back
FORUM8