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Article

Evaluation and Optimization of Secondary School Laboratory Layout Based on Simulation of Students’ Evacuation Behavior

College of Furnishings and Industrial Design, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Buildings 2026, 16(2), 405; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16020405
Submission received: 15 December 2025 / Revised: 9 January 2026 / Accepted: 14 January 2026 / Published: 19 January 2026
(This article belongs to the Section Building Energy, Physics, Environment, and Systems)

Abstract

Optimizing the furniture layout of middle school laboratories is crucial for improving the emergency safety, operational efficiency, and resilience of teaching buildings. This study used AnyLogic software to model and simulate pedestrian evacuation behavior in a typical middle school laboratory layout. In a standardized laboratory (90.75 m2), we constructed a behavior-oriented multi-agent evacuation model. The model incorporated key student parameters, including shoulder width (312–416 mm), walking speed (1.5–2.5 m/s), and reaction time (10–15 s). To ensure comparability between different layouts, the number of evacuees was fixed at 48. Evacuation performance was evaluated based on total evacuation time, spatial density, and detour distance. The results showed that the hybrid layout achieved the shortest evacuation time (28.0 s), which was 10.3% shorter than the island layout (31.2 s) and 34.7% shorter than the parallel layout (42.9 s). The hybrid layout also had a shorter average detour distance (9.78 m) and the lowest path variability (coefficient of variation CV = 0.33), indicating a more balanced evacuation load and a smaller bottleneck effect. Overall, these findings provide evidence-based recommendations for improving laboratory safety, space utilization, and behavioral adaptability, and provide a quantitative reference for updating educational building codes, school laboratory construction standards, and guidelines for laboratory furniture and safety facility configuration.
Keywords: pedestrian simulation; evacuation behavior; laboratory layout; evacuation performance; optimization design pedestrian simulation; evacuation behavior; laboratory layout; evacuation performance; optimization design

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Li, X.; Chen, Y. Evaluation and Optimization of Secondary School Laboratory Layout Based on Simulation of Students’ Evacuation Behavior. Buildings 2026, 16, 405. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16020405

AMA Style

Li X, Chen Y. Evaluation and Optimization of Secondary School Laboratory Layout Based on Simulation of Students’ Evacuation Behavior. Buildings. 2026; 16(2):405. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16020405

Chicago/Turabian Style

Li, Xihui, and Yushu Chen. 2026. "Evaluation and Optimization of Secondary School Laboratory Layout Based on Simulation of Students’ Evacuation Behavior" Buildings 16, no. 2: 405. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16020405

APA Style

Li, X., & Chen, Y. (2026). Evaluation and Optimization of Secondary School Laboratory Layout Based on Simulation of Students’ Evacuation Behavior. Buildings, 16(2), 405. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16020405

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