Fire Safety in Museums: Simulation of Fire Scenarios for Development of Control Evacuation Schemes from the Winter Palace of the Hermitage

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

TITLE:    FIRE SAFETY IN MUSEUMS: SIMULATION OF FIRE SCENARIOS FOR DEVELOPMENT OF CONTROL EVACUATION SCHEMES FROM THE WINTER PALACE OF THE HERMITAGE

Review comments

This is a well-written paper that presents the problems of evacuation in case of fire from the buildings of museums as places with mass presence of people. Features specific to museums and how they affect safe evacuation conditions are discussed. The most attention is paid to evacuation management since the vast majority of museum visitors are not familiar with the layout of the building. In this case, the actions of staff in evacuation management are decisive. The paper considers the development of evacuation schemes, taking into account the spread of fire hazards in the building and the development of instructions on their basis for the staff. In the example of the Winter Palace of the State Hermitage Museum, the solution of the marked tasks with the use of computer simulation of evacuation during a fire is given. Analysis of the simulation results showed the vulnerabilities of the museum. In the work the evacuation schemes for the scenarios are considered. The maximum number of visitors for a single stay in the Winter Palace has been set at 4.000. The principles of making evacuation schemes are formulated, including taking into account the peculiarities of space-planning solutions inherent in museums, such as enfilades and connection of rooms.

This paper is well-organized and useful. It can be published after addressing the following changes. I have a few comments for you to consider:

1.     In the introduction what are the possible Fire Control Levels for museums that needs to be addressed as per Russian guideline?

2.     The authors are advised to present a few case studies where the fire accident had occurred previously as reported by the previous studies. [E.g: Qualitative Fire Vulnerability Assessments for Museums and Their Collections: A Case Study from Kosovo]

3.     The possible two weaknesses in the control strategy are:

a.     No direct phone line to the fire department or other emergency authorities.

b.     No automatic fire suppression system inside the building built before 1950 which is badly required to have suppression systems). The authors need to mention this inside the text.

4.     As per Figure 9, why only 5 different locations are chosen in this study?

5.     Can the authors provide the outlook of vulnerability results at the end of this computer modelling study which could be beneficiary also for places with large gatherings?

6.     Please conduct an extensive literature review. Some of the most relevant references which are not in the literature review section are:

a)         On the fire behaviour of modular floors designed with optimised cold-formed steel joists.

b)         Collapse behaviour of a fire engineering designed single-storey cold-formed steel building in severe fires

c)         Fire hazard in buildings: review, assessment and strategies for improving fire safety

d)         Behaviour of continuous concrete-filled steel tubular columns loaded concentrically in fire

e)         Simple design procedure for concrete-filled steel tubular columns in fire

f)           Fire performance of edge and interior circular steel-reinforced concrete-filled steel tubular stub columns

g)           Development of cross-laminated timber-cold-formed steel composite beam for floor system to sustainable modular building construction

h)        Thermal modelling of LSF floor systems made of the lipped channel and hollow flange channel section joists

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The work here is to discuss fire safety in museums with a focus on the Winter Palace of the Hermitage. While the work is of interest and timely, the body suffers from technical issues in which the work can only be recommended for publication if these issues are clearly addressed.

·         The work should first start with a discussion on the required and available evacuation time as well documented in many studies such as https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2015.02.001 ; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jobe.2021.102559 ; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2009.08.005 ...

·         While the work is based on performing a series of CFD-based simulation, no modelling information is given in this matter.

·         The literature review is not complete- mostly some general information on the importance of such an investigation is given. The authors are advised to technically discuss previous events and make a clear conclusion at the end to show that their work is novel enough.

·         No information is given on the structural robustness if a fire occurs.

·         No information is given on the fire load density of the museum and that on what basis it is determined.

·         The work here is to implicitly use a building modelling information (BIM) tool; however, no standardized documentations are provided at the end. The authors are highly advised to create a new section for BIM so that an automatic fire evacuation plan can be proposed.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper deals with the issue of the fire safety in museums.

The manuscript that you are presenting is very interesting. Undoubtedly, one of the reasons for this is the facility from which you are analyzing the evacuation. The Winter Palace is a complicated object, therefore your analyzes are valuable. However, I have reservations.

The manuscript shows that the analyzes were performed using the programs. This applies to both the course of the evacuation and the conditions on the evacuation routes related to the development of a fire. Unfortunately, there is no information what kind of software it is.

The following information must be completed in the manuscript: the programs used, the entered data, the method of obtaining this data, the established boundary conditions, the applied computational models.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This manuscript is well organized. The topic is interesting for readers and this research deals with potentially significant knowledge to the field.

1.     Lines 39-40 Please provide definitions and indicate the components of the Available Safe Egress Time - ASET and Required Safe Egress Time - RSET. Please provide the values ​​of the critical quantities.

2.     Lines 63-64 Authors claim that “Thus, in order to successfully solve the problem of providing safe conditions for evacuation from the museum, it is necessary to have estimates how fast smoke (and other dander fire factors)……” Please describe these in detail “other dander fire factors”.

3.     What is assumed to be a combustible material ? Often, the cone calorimeter method (ISO 5660) is used for this purpose. Please add references in the field of testing and flammability parameters.

4.      Line 285 Explain the definition of smoke optical density and its unit.

5.     Are there fire extinguishing and smoke exhaust systems in the facility?

6.     The conclusions could be more comprehensive, and the discussions of the results could be more effective. Define better conclusions, it should  be vary vague and support better what the innovation is, unique finding of this work as compared to similar wokrs in international literature done through the years.

7.     English grammar must be revised.

Overall, the manuscript calls for minor revisions in order to improve its quality.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

no comments