Once a severe earthquake happened, fleeing speed, choice of shelter and evacuative route are crucial factors to the security and survival of the victims. Amount these three factors; evacuation route system plays the most important role for victims’ survival and to relieve the victims after the earthquake. If the function of the route system is unable to operate normally, it will influence the effect of taking refuge and to relieve the victims. Therefore, sound evaluation and planning of evacuative route can minimize the losses and damages.
This project focuses on the environment and the resident lived in a deteriorated urban community, and the research area is besieged by Xizang road, 125 lane Xizang road, Wanda road, 237 lane Wanda road in the “B77” area of Wan-hua District, Taipei. The study and performance analysis of the choosing evacuation route and shelter was conducted on the premise that there is on-going earthquake. Through investigating the width and length of the community road, arcade and pavement, as well as counting up the occupied rate of those areas during ordinary days, the effective-area for evacuation during earthquake can be reckoned.
There are some conclusions through the investigation, analysis and statistics of this research:
(1)In resident’s attributes:
The diversity of the resident's level of education, sort of career, degree of community participation and living period will make different choices of the shelter.
(2)In choosing evacuation routes:
The consideration to the choices of evacuation routes made by the resident are the width of road, the amount of the obstacle, such as: cars parked along the road, street venders, and object probably dropping from the high-rise, e.g. fascias, air conditioners. And through statistical analysis, we have come to the following conclusion.
1.The road directly leads to the opening space and campuses has higher utility rate.
2.Only few residents choose the lanes to evacuate, so the effect of shortcut effect is not obvious.
3.The evacuation routes split into two - right to “Youth Park” and left to“Wan-hua Junior Sigh School”, and the flow is similar to the dispersive type. The flow of people has less conflict.
4.The evacuation of residents will cause a huge conflux of people in the lane 125, Xizang road that will probably blocked up the path when the earthquake disaster.
5.There is a gap between the cognition of evacuation place, route and the actual behavior of evacuation. People’s fear and panic might influent their decision to choose rational evacuation route and refuge place.
(3)In choosing the shelter:
The factors of that evacuation place why the residents choose are whether it is a spacious space, a familiar route or a safe place. According to the study, "Youth Park" is majority’s choice.
(4)In assessment of the efficiency of the route:
If we don't consider the utility rate of every section in a road, a utility area obtained averagely by the sample of community residents content with the highest number of the route efficiency obviously.
