A pilot study using virtual reality to investigate the effects of emergency egress signs competing with environmental variables on route choices (original) (raw)
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Are emergency egress signs strong enough to overlap the influence of the environmental variables?
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 2013
This paper aims to explore the strength of environmental variables (i.e., corridor width and brightness), in directing people to indoor locations during emergency situations. The existence of contradictory information was manipulated by inserting posted signs pointing to the opposite direction to the one suggested by the environmental variables. A Virtual Reality-based methodology was used to collect participants' directional choices. Sixty-four participants had to find a specific room as quickly as possible in a virtual hotel in which they navigated through 12 corridor intersections (two-forced-choices). Two experimental conditions were considered (i.e., Signs and No-signs conditions) according to the exit signs availability. Results indicated that for the first decision point in an emergency situation with signs, 65.6% of the participants preferred to follow the wider corridor instead of the exit sign direction. Percentages of choices favoring the path opposite to that posted by the sign decreased along the escape route suggesting that with the repeated exposure to an exit sign people increased their compliance with it.
Introduction Evacuation from tunnel fire emergencies may become problematic if tunnel occupants do not engage quickly enough into evacuation. Dangerous goods transporters increase the risks tunnel occupants are exposed to. The aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of an increased risk during a simulated tunnel emergency on participants' subjective hazard perception and evacuation behavior. Methods Using a five sided CAVE system, two experimental groups were immersed into a virtual road tunnel fire emergency. In the dangerous goods condition a burning gasoline transporter was visible. In the control condition a burning heavy goods vehicle was visible. Hazard perception, pre-movement time, movement time and exit choices were analyzed. Results In the dangerous goods condition the situation was rated significantly more dangerous than in the control condition. In both conditions participants showed appropriate behavioral reactions and either moved to an emergency exit or to an emergency phone. Discussion In combination with the high threat ratings the results indicate good situation awareness of the participants, and that emergency signage in the given visibility conditions was effective in guiding participants towards an exit or to an emergency phone.
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.
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.
The Possibilities of Using Virtual Environments in Research on Wayfinding
The study evaluated the degree of comparability of human behaviour exhibited during an evacuation scenario conducted in two environments, one real and the other virtual. For this purpose, we created a precise 3D model (digital twin) of a real campus building. In both the experimental (virtual environment) and control (real environment) groups, the participants were all first-time visitors to the building. The groups were instructed to locate a target room where they would subsequently be required to complete a simple task, at which point an evacuation alarm would be set off. We evaluated three types of data collected during their quest to find a way out of the building: an eye-tracker logged gaze hits on various objects (e.g., navigation signs), recorded the locomotion and trajectory of the participants, and logged a combination of these parameters (e.g., points along the path where participants sighted certain objects). The sample was composed of 73 participants (35 for the real en...
Spatial Familiarity and Exit Route Selection in Emergency Egress
Fire Technology, 2019
Familiarity is widely accepted as a key variable for the exit route selection of occupants of a building in emergency egress, but how to evaluate it has not been well researched. In addition, familiarity with general space layout (building familiarity) and familiarity with exits (exit familiarity) are often interchangeably used, which may cause inappropriate understanding of building and occupant characteristics among fire engineers and architects. In the current study, a paper-based survey was conducted to examine the difference between the two familiarities in a six-story library building. The two familiarities were implicitly evaluated by the spatial knowledge of the participants on the locations of restrooms, elevators, stairways for exit purposes in an emergency, and their current location. Sixty-nine valid responses of the participants' spatial knowledge were semi-quantitatively evaluated based upon the accuracy of the answered position against the actual position. The results reveal that the two familiarities are not synonymous and needs to be understood and handled differently in fire engineering. In particular, the location of emergency-only exit stairways was perceived as low as 20% of non-emergency-only stairways; on average, each of the former and latter stairways was perceived by 8 and 33 participants out of 69 participants, respectively. This result raises concerns about the efficacy of the emergency-only-exit concept. The direction of the next destination out of a building was found to be a key factor to determine the travel route within a building where occupants have good familiarity with the building and surrounding places.
A Virtual Reality Experiment on Flashing Lights at Emergency Exit Portals for Road Tunnel Evacuation
A virtual reality (VR) experiment with 96 participants was carried out to provide recommendations on the design of flashing lights at emergency exit portals for road tunnel emergency evacuation. The experiment was carried out in a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment laboratory. A set of variables was investigated, namely (1) colour of flashing lights, (2) flashing rate, (3) type of light source, (4) number and layout of the lights on the portal. Participants were immersed in a VR road tunnel emergency evacuation scenario and they were then asked to rank different portal designs using a questionnaire based on the Theory of Affordances. Results show that green or white flashing lights perform better than blue lights. A flashing rate of 1 and 4 Hz performed better than a flashing rate of 0.25 Hz. A light emitting diode light source performed better than single and double strobe lights. The three layouts of the lights under consideration performed similarly.
Evaluating Dynamic Signage for Emergency Evacuation using an Immersive Video Environment
2013
Münster, WWU) for providing me with a good environment and facilities to complete this project. In Addition thanks and appreciation to the helpful people at SITCOM lab to help me to work with available system called Immersive Video (IVE) specially Mr. Holger Fritze and Mr. Dennis Wilhelm. Finally, an honorable mention goes to my families and friends for their understandings and supports on me in completing this project specially my parents and my friends. For all the people who helped me a lot, thank you very much and may god bless you all.
JAPAN ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW, 2023
Fire alarms play a significant role in situational awareness and decision-making pertaining to evacuation for fire evacuation safety in office buildings that include small rooms, where many occupants cannot directly see fire or smoke. We conducted experiments using a mobile VR head-mounted display to examine how individuals perceive the sound of fire alarms in rooms of different sizes. Comparing the cases of hearing the alarm sound in the large room and the small room, approximately 70% of the test participants answered that they wanted to check the situation more when they were in the small room because they could not understand the surrounding situation. Regardless of the room size, when test participants hear the early warning voice, approximately 40% of them would check the neighborhood and evacuate, and when they hear the evacuation directive voice alarm, more than 90% will take the same action. We also discussed the awareness process of occupants considering this result and the configuration of a smoke detection system in Japan. Approximately half of the people in the large room take checking actions; however, the remaining people do not take specific confirmation actions for about 1–3 min and do not check for fires or evacuate.
International Journal of Human-computer Studies / International Journal of Man-machine Studies, 2010
Human behaviour in fires is mainly studied by incident evaluations and real-life experiments, such as unannounced evacuation drills. The possibilities of virtual reality for studying human behaviour in fires are so far hardly adopted by researchers. Nevertheless, the application of a behavioural assessment and research tool (BART) in virtual reality is expected to be a valuable supplement on the existing research methods. The innovative instrument will be validated by comparing the results of experiments in a virtual environment with results of the same experiments in real life. In this paper some results of case studies on evacuation behaviour in a real hotel building, as well as in a virtual hotel building in BART are given. The participants' route choice, pre-movement time, pre-evacuation behaviour, movement time and evacuation behaviour are part of the analysis in the paper.