In modern fire and life safety engineering, significant progress has been made in building codes, evacuation strategies, fire suppression systems and performance-based design. Yet one critical issue remains under-addressed across many projects and emergency response plans: the assisted evacuation of Persons of Determination and mobility-impaired occupants.

Across the Middle East, cities are developing increasingly complex built environments — supertall towers, transport hubs, airports, mixed-use developments, healthcare facilities and high-density public infrastructure. Many of these projects achieve impressive levels of code compliance and technological sophistication. However, the practical realities of evacuating vulnerable occupants during an emergency are often not fully considered beyond minimum regulatory requirements.

This is where the gap between compliance and capability becomes most visible.

Compliance does not always mean capability

In many projects, assisted evacuation is addressed through standard provisions such as refuge areas, evacuation chairs, wider staircases, accessible exits and emergency communication systems. These measures are important and form an essential baseline for inclusive life safety design.

However, one question often remains insufficiently answered:

Who will actually assist vulnerable occupants during a real emergency, and how effectively can that assistance be delivered under stress, congestion, smoke conditions and time pressure?

In practice, emergencies rarely unfold in the controlled manner assumed during design calculations. Occupants may delay evacuation, wait for instructions, attempt to contact family members, or assume an alarm is false. In high-rise buildings, people may still move toward lift lobbies despite instructions not to use elevators. For elderly occupants, wheelchair users, visually impaired persons, hospital patients, children or people with temporary injuries, evacuation depends not only on building design but also on human coordination, trained assistance and operational decision-making.

This is why assisted evacuation cannot be treated only as a design compliance item. It must be treated as an operational life safety strategy.

High-rise buildings and the vertical evacuation challenge

The challenge becomes even more significant in high-rise buildings.

Traditional evacuation strategies rely heavily on stair-based evacuation, assuming occupants can descend multiple floors under emergency conditions. While this may be reasonable for able-bodied occupants over limited distances, it can be extremely difficult for mobility-impaired occupants.

Evacuation chairs are often proposed as the default solution. Yet many organisations do not realistically assess the number of trained personnel, physical effort, stair management, rest points and communication support required to move even one wheelchair user down multiple floors during a high-stress incident.

A compliant building may therefore still face a serious operational gap if the assisted evacuation process has not been tested, resourced and understood by those expected to implement it.

The role of evacuation lifts

One important development in modern evacuation strategy is the increasing acceptance of evacuation lifts.

Historically, occupants were universally instructed not to use elevators during fires. However, advances in protected lift lobbies, fire-resisting construction, emergency power supplies, smoke control, water protection and firefighter lift technology are changing this approach.

For supertall buildings, healthcare facilities, airports and transport infrastructure, evacuation lifts can provide a practical assisted evacuation strategy where stair descent is unrealistic. However, their success depends on more than engineering design.

Key operational questions must be resolved before an incident occurs. Who controls the lift operation? How are vulnerable occupants prioritised? How is communication maintained with waiting occupants? What is the fallback strategy if lift use becomes unavailable? How are evacuation lift operations coordinated with first responders?

Unless these questions are answered through procedures, training and drills, the presence of evacuation lifts alone does not guarantee evacuation capability.

Airports, transport infrastructure and public facilities

Assisted evacuation is especially important in airports, metro stations and large public facilities. These environments accommodate constantly changing occupant profiles, including elderly travellers, wheelchair users, families with children, international passengers, persons with sensory impairments and people unfamiliar with the building.

In such facilities, evacuation is not simply an engineering exercise. It is a large-scale human management challenge.

Design teams may provide compliant exit widths, smoke control systems and alarm arrangements, but operators must still manage communication, crowd movement, passenger assistance, staff deployment and coordination with emergency responders. The more complex the facility, the more important it becomes to connect fire engineering design with operational readiness.

A practical framework for assisted evacuation

To close this gap, assisted evacuation should be addressed through a practical framework, not only through drawings and code checklists.

First, buildings should identify likely assisted evacuation needs based on occupancy type. Residential towers, hotels, hospitals, offices, airports and public venues all have different occupant profiles, and these profiles should be reflected in the emergency plan.

Second, assisted evacuation procedures should assign clear responsibilities. It should be known who will assist, who will communicate with occupants waiting in refuge areas, who will coordinate evacuation lift use, and who will liaise with first responders.

Third, evacuation equipment should be selected based on actual operational requirements. Evacuation chairs, communication systems, refuge intercoms and lift controls must be suitable for the building height, staffing levels and expected occupant needs.

Fourth, emergency drills should include assisted evacuation scenarios. Many drills confirm alarm activation and general evacuation flow, but do not test how vulnerable occupants are identified, assisted, moved or communicated with during an incident.

Fifth, assisted evacuation arrangements should be reviewed whenever the building changes. Fit-outs, occupancy changes, refurbishment works, new operators, changes in staffing levels and changes in use can all affect evacuation capability.

Finally, training must be continuous. Security teams, facility managers, fire wardens, hotel operators, airport staff and emergency response teams should understand the assisted evacuation strategy before they are expected to perform it during an emergency.

Bridging design and operations

One of the biggest challenges in the industry is the disconnect between design-stage compliance and operational readiness.

Fire and life safety consultants may produce compliant evacuation strategies, smoke control analyses and occupant movement calculations. But unless these strategies are translated into procedures, staff training, drills and incident command protocols, their real-world effectiveness remains uncertain.

True evacuation resilience requires coordination between fire engineers, architects, building operators, facility managers, accessibility specialists, emergency responders and authorities having jurisdiction.

A building should not only be capable of passing design review. It should be capable of supporting all occupants during a real emergency.

Be prepared

The effectiveness of any fire and life safety strategy should ultimately be measured not only by compliance certificates or design calculations, but by its ability to protect people under real emergency conditions.

Assisted evacuation remains one of the most overlooked yet operationally critical aspects of emergency planning.

As buildings grow taller, infrastructure becomes more complex and occupant diversity continues to increase, the industry must move beyond theoretical compliance and place greater emphasis on practical evacuation capability.

Because in a real emergency, life safety is not defined by what is written in the design report. It is defined by whether every occupant can actually reach safety.