EVACUATION PROCESS IN HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

High-rise building is a common sight in land-scarce Singapore and its fire safety is of great emphasis. Although a set of stringent regulations has been established to regulate the fire safety performance within local high-rise buildings and historical statistic has not shown any past serious fire incidents, having a complacent attitude towards evacuation process during fire emergencies could put the safety of occupants at stake and bring about disastrous consequences. This dissertation is undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of current evacuation process in local tall buildings and recommend means to enhance the existing evacuation process. By using questionnaire, data have been collected via email and printed copy from the people working in local high-rise office buildings. Structured interviews are conducted with the Singapore Civil Defence Force to gain an insight on local authority’s attempt to elevate the performance of current evacuation process. The hypothesis of this dissertation is that improvements are still needed in the evacuation process in local high-rise buildings. The survey results reveal that most occupants are not familiar with the building layout and evacuation practices that take place in the tall buildings where they work. Respondents’ views have also being looked into to gain a better understanding on the general attitude that they have towards fire drill. Interview results show the authority’s effort in improving the evacuation procedure in local high-rise buildings. Together with the data collected from the questionnaire survey, recommendations are made to improve the evacuation process. The limitation of this dissertation is the small sample size for the questionnaire which might lead to inaccuracy of the findings. Besides that, more than half of the respondents were from a particular building and hence, their opinions might be affected by the specific characteristics of that building. Another limitation is the difficulty of conducting interview with an occupant who has undergone through a real emergency evacuation under fire incident. Such interview could be helpful for this dissertation as it could provide a concrete basis for this research study.