Isovists compactness and stairs as predictors of evacuation route choice (original) (raw)
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Spatial Cognition & Computation, 2021
During evacuation, individual navigation behavior is often dictated by the legibility of evacuation signs and the environmental setting itself. People tend to follow previously-used and known routes (to retrace) rather than follow evacuation signage. This has proven undesirable, even fatal, in emergencies and such behavior calls for a better understanding of the influencing factors. This contribution consists of a virtual reality experiment in which 72 participants evacuated from a hotel building in which the spatial configurations were altered. The tendency to retrace diminished when the evacuation route led through a wider, straight corridor, suggesting that the building's spatial configuration has an important influence on retracing and should be more carefully considered in the design of buildings in and agent-based simulations.
International Journal of Safety and Security Engineering, 2022
Nowadays, the existing evacuation method for emergencies in a building still relies on exit signs and evacuation maps, which usually take longer for the victim to read thoroughly in the case of panic. Therefore, Dynamic Evacuation Routing System (DERS) is developed as a guiding evacuation system that comes in lines, and the lights are programmable to show the safest and shortest path to escape. We developed DERS with Virtual Reality (VR) as a training system tool. Three variables will be tested, namely DERS implementation, type of building, and the starting floor level. This quantification combined three methods: Presence Questionnaire (PQ), System Usability Scale (SUS), and usability matrix. It was suggested that DERS implementation was able to improve all results collectively with different building and starting floor levels as other significant factors affecting the results and the quality of the simulation were good for immersion level (3.90 out of 5.00) and decent for usability level (71.72 out of 100). Therefore, DERS implementation could improve evacuation effectiveness in the case of an emergency, and VR simulation has been successfully utilized as a medium for evaluating new evacuation systems using DERS.
2014
Emergencies (e.g., fire egress) into complex buildings are stressful situations which can provoke unexpected, undesired and sometimes unsafety behaviors in the users. Thus, the main objective of this pilot study was to investigate the relative influence of new technology-based exit signs, when compared to the conventional static ISO-type counterparts, in the users' wayfinding behavior during an emergency egress. A critical situation was designed in which the environmental variables and exit signs, at the 12 decision points, were giving conflicting directional information. Thirty participants were randomly assigned to the two groups (i.e., Static signs and dynamic signs), and their route-choices in the 12 decision points displaced along a route into a virtual hotel were collected using a Virtual Reality-based methodology. Findings suggest that for the group exposed to static ISO-type exit signs, the reliance on environmental variables decreased along the egress route, and for the first intersection about 73% of participants preferred to follow by the direction which was the opposite of that posted on the egress sign. However, when technology-based signs were used, the influence of the environmental variables was weak from the first decision point to the end, as suggested by a compliance rate with the exit signs reaching almost 98% along the entire route.
People choice modelling for evacuation of tall buildings
Published as: Aleksandrov M., Rajabifard A., Kalantari M., Lovreglio R., Gonzalez V., People choice modelling for evacuation of tall buildings, Fire Technology, Abstract. Modelling people behaviour during emergencies has become an essential issue in attempting to increase safety aspects in buildings. This paper evaluates people's choice behaviour for evacuation of tall buildings. A Stated Preference (SP) questionnaire was designed to understand underlying factors behind people behaviour and predict the likelihood of selecting evacuation lifts as opposed to stairs. Various scenarios including six different navigational cases, three levels for the density of people on stairs, three different number of people in the lift lobby and three vertical positions for refuge floors were administrated to 566 participants. A mixed logit model approach was then used to investigate how those factors influence the occupant's decision-making as well as to capture the heterogeneity of different preferences among people. Traditionally, lifts were not allowed to be used in case of emergency, but the results indicate that people would tend to choose evacuation lifts in situations when they are suggested as the main exit option, and situations when stairs are overcrowded. Thus, if people are navigated by dynamic signs to use evacuation lifts, the percentage of lift users could go approximately from 70% to 80% for refuge floors between 15 and 55, respectively. In contrast, in situations when people have to make a decision between using lifts or stairs to evacuate, stairwells with fewer people as well as overcrowded refuge floors could lead to a decision in favour of stairs. This study represents the first SP experiment combining people decisions, pre-event opinions and beliefs related to evacuation lifts and stairs to understand their route choices for evacuation from tall buildings. The findings of this study can be used in the development of behavioural models for evacuation simulations of tall buildings.
Virtual Reality
The current manuscript verifies the use of virtual reality (VR)-based methodology as a helpful way to study human behavior during the pre-evacuation period, considering the influence of pre-emergency activity (competitive tasks). Two conditions with different engagement levels (i.e., low and high) were set up, and sixty company workers were distributed across conditions randomly. Five types of evacuation behaviors were defined, and compliance behavior results showed most participants (66.7%) evacuated with the ISO-type evacuation alarm in low engagement condition, whereas only 20% of participants evacuated in high engagement situation. Statistical results confirmed the influence of pre-emergency activity on evacuation efficiency. Open-ended questions summarized three levels of knowledge background that justified the reasons/motivations behind pre-evacuation behaviors. simulator sickness, presence, and usability questionnaires confirmed the variable control between conditions. In sum...
Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2012, 2013
A general challenge during a building emergency evacuation is guiding crowd to the best exits, given potential hazards and blockages due to high density use. Although computer simulation programs such as FDS+Evac allow researchers to evaluate various guidance policies under different circumstances, computational complexity limits their use during an actual emergency. A second limitation of such programs currently available is that they can only model certain psychological variables that affect evacuation. We suggest two innovations to address these difficulties. First, using macroscopic models, mathematical techniques can allow for rapid optimization of guidance that could eventually be used to provide real-time guidance during emergencies. Second, we conduct virtual reality experiments using human participants to provide confirmation of our models, and provide insights into how psychological factors not yet available in FDS+Evac will affect evacuation outcomes. Results of an initial VR experiment are presented.
The influence of environmental features on route selection in an emergency situation
Applied Ergonomics, 2013
Understanding the influence of external information at a lower level of awareness during the processes of route selection could be a key factor to predict user's movements within complex buildings, avoiding wayfinding problems and improving egress in emergency situations. This study aims to verify whether corridor intersection configuration attributes, such as width and brightness, act as factors of attraction to improve the affordance of indoor hallways during an emergency egress situation, using a VR-based methodology. The main hypotheses are that users tend to move along either, wider or brighter corridors. Thirty volunteers participated in this study, moving along 57 different corridors, according to the experimental conditions of the study. The results suggest that people prefer to follow brighter pathways in "T-type" and "F-type" intersections, and wider corridors in "T-type" intersections. In situations where these variables are in conflict, there is a preference for brighter paths in both intersection configurations.
A Mixed Logit Model for Predicting Exit Choice during Building Evacuations
Knowledge on human behaviour in emergency is crucial to increase the safety of buildings and transportation systems. Decision making during evacuations implies different choices, of which one of the most important concerns the escape route. The choice of a route may involve local decisions between alternative exits from an enclosed environment. This work investigates the influence of environmental (presence of smoke, emergency lighting and distance of exit) and social factors (interaction with evacuees close to the exits and with those near the decision-maker) on local exit choice. This goal is pursued using an online stated preference survey carried out making use of non-immersive virtual reality. A sample of 1,503 participants is obtained and a Mixed Logit Model is calibrated using these data. The model shows that presence of smoke, emergency lighting, distance of exit, number of evacuees near the exits and the decision-maker, and flow of evacuees through the exits significantly affect local exit choice. Moreover, the model points out that decision making is affected by a high degree of behavioural uncertainty. Our findings support the improvement of evacuation models and the accuracy of their results, which can assist in designing and managing building and transportation systems. The main contribution of this work is to enrich the understanding of how local exit choices are made and how behavioural uncertainty affects these choices.
Evacuation Efficiency Evaluation Model Based on Euclidean Distance with Visual Depth
2007
This study proposes an evacuation efficiency evaluation model considering both the spatial configuration and the physical/Euclidean distance of the layout. One of the critical issues in the design of high-rise buildings is the evacuation planning, and a tool for evaluating the evacuation efficiency is highly needed. The conventional evacuation efficiency evaluation tools such as SIMULEX focus on the evacuation time, and thus are inappropriate in specifically pointing out the areas with evacuation difficulty within the layout being analyzed. This study focuses on the configurational properties of space because they are easily connected with the evacuation route based on plan layout. The concept of Visibility Graph Analysis (VGA) is adopted as the starting point for measuring the configurational properties. In addition, the physical evacuation distance is considered as another basic factor for the evaluation of evacuation efficiency in order to describe actual physical setting of the building. Evacuation Cost can be inferred as the sum of the traveling distance (Distance Cost) and the change of visual information within the evacuation process (Visibility Cost). Distance Cost from a point to exit is proportionate to the evacuation distance. The Visibility Cost is the degree of effort required to visually survey for exit, and it is related to visual point depth. Essentially, the proposed model calculates the Evacuation Cost from a certain point to exit by substituting the summation of Distance Cost and Visibility Cost for the visual depth of the visibility graph. With reference to this, three hypotheses to examine the relation between Distance Cost and Visibility Cost are initially proposed. Moreover, two additional hypotheses which adopt the concept of Angular Analysis are proposed. In this paper, this new method is applied to an actual high-rise building, I-Park in Seoul, and its results are compared with those of SIMULEX, the evacuation simulation program. The high correlation and stability of the results suggest that the model proposed in this study can replace SIMULEX. The proposed model offers a clear visualization of the evacuation efficiency within a building plan, which can play a major role in the design development process where decisions must be made between alternatives. It can also be used to work out evacuation planning of buildings that are already built.