Structuresblog

The Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI) of ASCE is hosting a Symposium on Egress Stairs in High-Rise Buildings, May 15 in New York City. The symposium will feature a series of presentations by leading experts discussing both human and construction factors in the designs of egress stairs, offering participants insights into the future of high-rise buildings and egress stair construction. Cooperating organizations include The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP) and the Building Security Council (BSC). This symposium is geared primarily to high-rise building architects and engineers, as well as those responsible for the safety occupants in future and existing buildings.

From the AEI website,

In the years following incidents at the World Trade Center, the Murrah Federal Building, the Cook County Administration Building, and the LaSalle Bank Building, our traditional high-rise evacuation strategies of defend-in-place or partial evacuation have been much scrutinized. Most recently, they have elicited recommendations from NIST for changes to our building codes. Whereas codes presently size and protect stairwells to accommodate the occupant load of a building’s largest floor, under the assumption that fire is the principal hazard and it will be confined to the floor of fire origin, we now find proposals for enhancing and enlarging stair construction to meet perceived threats of bombings, blackouts, CBR agents, and other catastrophes—events that will likely entail evacuation of the entire building whether warranted or not. In this symposium, leading practitioners and researchers will present and discuss their ideas about the proposed egress enhancements and related high-rise evacuation concepts in order to help evaluate their need and effectiveness given the realities of present day society.