EPPO drill at Naval Base in Skaramagas

On November 22nd, 2016 E.P.P.O. in collaboration with University of Athens (UoA) the coordinator of the E-PreS Project, executed a drill in Hellenic Navy's Petty Οfficers' Academy located in the premises of Naval Base in Skaramagas area, in Attica Region.
The building of the Academy in which the drill took place consists of 2 floors, ground floor and basement.
There were two evacuation exits; one at the ground floor and one at the basement. All floors were connected by two different staircases. Classrooms were located at the first and second floor and the Academy laboratories at the ground floor. Since the laboratories were not occupied at the time of the drill only the classrooms of the 1st and 2nd floor participated in the simulation. In total 180 students participated in the drill.
A total of 5 checkpoint nodes were placed in the building; 2 at the exits (1 at the ground floor and 1 at the basement), 3 at staircases (1st and 2nd floor).
Before the drill performance the EPPO team distributed the tags in each classroom and briefly informed the participants about the start signal of the drill and the evacuation routes according to the building’s emergency plan. All students were in their classrooms at the beginning of the drill.
UoA team was responsible of the installation and monitoring of the procedure. They installed the sensors (RFID readers) and antennas and put the data (blueprints, evacuation paths) in the EPreS software.
The observation of speed and flow density of students participated in the drill revealed a total evacuation time of 4 min, in which 180 persons passed the 5 checkpoints and all reached the exits. It is worth mentioned that the maximum flux at the basement exit reached the number of 40 persons/5 sec which consists an overload and corrections on the evacuation procedure should be considered.