Emergency Preparedness

Pathfinder is a sophisticated modeling tool that can simulates occupant movement during emergencies. By default, it directs occupants along the fastest routes to defined exits, removing them from the model once they evacuate. It can integrate with PyroSim(FDS) simulations to calculate exposure to smoke toxins (Fractional Effective Dose) and evaluate reduced visibility effects in a fire. The software also supports modeling assisted evacuations with customizable Vehicles and teams of Assistants for people with mobility needs. Additional features include tools to simulate the spread of threat awareness as well as delayed or probabilistic reactions. Even epidemic and pandemic situations can be modeled with social distancing behaviors and built-in analysis tools like proximity tracing and visual indicators for distancing.

These models include: exposure to fire conditions, assisted evacuation, the spread of threat awareness, and social distancing.

Exposure to Fire Conditions

The default behavior in Pathfinder is to evacuate. Due to a fire, an occupant takes the fastest route to a set of exits defined in the model. Once an agent goes through an exit, they are removed from the simulation and reported as having exited the model.

Consider exposure to toxins

Pathfinder incorporates the ability to couple Pathfinder and PyroSim (FDS) simulations for the purposes of Fractional Effective Dose (FED) calculations. Pathfinder creates data for each occupant as they move throughout the simulation.

Results Viewer also provides the ability to perform this calculation, without the need to couple two simulations. When Occupants of a Pathfinder simulation move through a movement space that contains the necessary results from PyroSim, the Results Viewer can calculate the FED of smoke irritants that Occupants are exposed to.

Consider visibility reduction

Results provides the ability to perform Occupant visibility calculations through smoke and model the impact of reduced visibility on an evacuation plan.

When Occupants of a Pathfinder simulation move through a movement space that contains the necessary visibility data from a PyroSim simulation, Results uses the Occupant’s location, orientation (predicting line-of-sight visibility), and the FDS smoke obscuration data to calculate two different Visibility values for Occupants. These two values are calculated for a full height (standing) Occupant and a low height (crawling) Occupant.

Assisted Evacuation

Occupants with special mobility needs can be modelled with Vehicles to be evacuated by designated assistants. Separate evacuation teams can focus on assisting specific groups of occupants.

Create custom Vehicles for more mobility possibilities. Vehicles have configurable vertices and assistant attachment points to create unique shapes and physical properties. These models include full animation for realistic results.

Spread of Threat Awareness

Pathfinder supports flexible tools that can interrupt an occupant’s current behavior and replace it with another behavior, either temporarily or permanently. Occupants can be forced to react, can delay reaction, or react based on a probability distribution.

This, combined with Monte Carlo randomization, allows modelling of spreading threat awareness. The reaction can be assigned to each individual occupant to uniquely respond.

Social Distancing

Social distancing behavior can be modeled in Pathfinder within the occupant preferences.

Tools are flexible, allowing users to:

• Set occupant social distance preferences
• Limit Social Distancing to specific Occupants with Tags
• Eliminate social distancing within defined groups

Results Viewer supports analysis work including:

• Display social distance disks as half of the social distance radius, so that disk overlap directly indicates occupants are too close
• Proximity tracing analysis for confined spaces to retrofit crowd models during a pandemic