Abstract: To investigate the influence of ventilation and smoke exhaust on personnel evacuation, full-scale fires were numerically simulated by employing FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator) and Pathfinder based on a typical three-layer subway station. Under different fire locations and smoke control and ventilation modes, available safety egress time and required safety egress time were analyzed. Moreover, by introducing the safety evacuation coefficient, the personnel safety in each layer was discussed. Results show that the complex subway hub station hardly satisfies the requirement of the present code. Moreover, the difficulty for personnel evacuation is the highest in the transfer layer. The safety of personnel evacuation can be significantly improved by activating the smoke control and ventilation system. Under the modes of smoke exhaust and air supply of the whole region and subregions, the personnel safety cannot be guaranteed for all layers. However, the positive pressure ventilation mode presents a great evacuation performance under all cases. In addition, under the failure condition of smoke exhaust, smoke exhaust mode and evacuation route are optimized.