Spatial cognition and wayfinding strategy during building fire (original) (raw)

Simulation of human behavior in space is a powerful research method to advance our understanding of the interaction between people and their environment. It allows for both the examination and testing of models and their underlying theory of cognitive and perceptual phenomena as well as the observation of the system's behavior. This paper outlines the use of specific spatial objects to facilitate escaping from an indoor environment in a crisis situation. To represent and simulate people's processes of wayfinding it is necessary to understand how people immediately make sense of spatial situations while performing a wayfinding task which will occur in a building during fire emergencies. The theoretical outset of the research is the observation that humans show distinct behavioral and cognitive preferences when dealing with wayfinding tasks in dangerous situations. The goal of the research is to organize environmental cues and to use them in decision-making and navigation in an indoor environment in a fire emergency. Construction and inspection of mental representations of spatial environments and exploring these models have been discussed and the proposed computational model tested in an indoor complex building. Initial results verify the reliability of the model.