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Where drills differ from evacuations: A case study on Canadian buildings
Abstract
Planned egress drills are required by building codes around the world, and are commonly used to both train occupants and assess evacuation procedures. However, capturing the idea of a “successful” drill is often difficult. Data from both drills and unplanned evacuations are often incomplete and unreliable, which raises a key question: How well-matched are planned egress drills and unplanned evacuations in terms of their properties and outcomes? That is, are drills a good model of evacuation? In this paper, we compare 93 planned egress drills and 23 unplanned evacuations, which occurred in Canadian office buildings over a span of four years. Our two main findings are that (1) planned egress drills differ from unplanned evacuations in terms of frequency, timing, and outcome (e.g., reported total evacuation time), and (2) the reported number of occupants correlates with total evacuation time. These findings motivate a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the current approach to data reporting, and we highlight potential implications for (and limitations of) the current drill model.
... However, the realism of an evacuation drill is dependent on many aspects (e.g., assumed route availability, time of day, population, etc.) [7]. Kinateder et al. (2021) [50] found that drills are often organised under unrepresentative, favourable conditions and thus evacuation times from drills may not actually be representing real emergency scenarios also making training outputs questionable, as they do not employ realistic boundary conditions. The potential of drills is then often not fully realised. ...
... However, the realism of an evacuation drill is dependent on many aspects (e.g., assumed route availability, time of day, population, etc.) [7]. Kinateder et al. (2021) [50] found that drills are often organised under unrepresentative, favourable conditions and thus evacuation times from drills may not actually be representing real emergency scenarios also making training outputs questionable, as they do not employ realistic boundary conditions. The potential of drills is then often not fully realised. ...
... However, just like training in VR or AR, drills can only be as engaging and realistic as organised. Kinateder et al. (2021) [50] describe how conditions of drills do often differ from reality by studying data from a large sample of drills and actual evacuations. Drills are seldom organised to consider detailed exit scenarios or dynamic fire events, which would increase scenario realism, but such organisation and the conduction of refined full-scale exercises come with great associated cost. ...
This paper presents a scoping review of methods for fire evacuation training in buildings. It adopts the PRISMA methodology (Transparent Reporting of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) and systematically identifies 73 sources among scientific literature published between 1997 and 2022. It was found that the literature is dominated by research on modern technology (Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Serious Games) for evacuation training emphasizing that increased immersion, engagement, and realism positively affect learning effects. These technologies may be able to overcome main drawbacks of traditional evacuation drills bringing down cost and reducing the disruptiveness of evacuation training. However, great inconsistencies in measuring performance of trainees and lack of reasoning in the design of training programmes impede conclusions that go beyond qualitative trends. The field would profit from clear methodologies to assess evacuation performance and training effects and from transdisciplinary approaches aimed at ensuring that training can deliver on its educational goals.
... To address a portion of this question, Kinateder et al. [17] examined the differences in total evacuation times between evacuation drills and unplanned evacuation events. In their analysis of total evacuation times from 93 drills and 23 unplanned evacuations gathered from 49 office buildings between 2016-2019, they found that drills produced faster evacuation times compared with unplanned evacuations (by ~2 min on average), potentially limiting the use of drill data as a reasonable proxy for actual building events. ...
... In their analysis of total evacuation times from 93 drills and 23 unplanned evacuations gathered from 49 office buildings between 2016-2019, they found that drills produced faster evacuation times compared with unplanned evacuations (by ~2 min on average), potentially limiting the use of drill data as a reasonable proxy for actual building events. The authors, however, raise another important point; because drill and unplanned evacuation data are inconsistently measured and collected across events, it is unclear to extent to which the results from Kinateder et al. [17] are complicated by this issue. Missing from the literature are studies that examine evacuation times from drills and unplanned events from the same building conditions. ...
... Similarly, Proulx's study [28] of a high-rise apartment building fire (e.g., the Forest Laneway fire) noted average pre-evacuation delays of 10 mins for those who attempted to evacuate within the first hour whereas, evacuees from unannounced evacuation drills from mid-and high-rise apartment buildings delayed between 2.5 and 9.7 minutes (on average). Similar to the key message from Kinateder et al. [17], but focused on pre-evacuation times, these findings potentially question the use of pre-evacuation drill data in lieu of data from actual fires in a variety of building types, including library buildings. ...
Performance-based fire design can be carried out by comparing results from fire simulations and evacuation simulations. Simulating evacuation of buildings requires engineers to have access to several sets of evacuation data, including occupant travel speeds, flow rates, and pre-evacuation time. Especially in building types where people may take longer before beginning travel to the exits, pre-evacuation behaviours and times are among the most important data required for reliable evacuation simulation output.
This work provides new pre-evacuation data collected in four evacuations of the same university library. Two of these evacuations were pre-planned (unannounced) drills, while the other two were unplanned evacuations due to false alarms. In this study, the pre-evacuation behaviour and times of 497 students were analysed using the CCTV videos of these four evacuations. The results illustrate that un-planned evacuations had higher pre-evacuation times. Further, the data analysis shows that the type of evacuation (pre-vs unplanned), the performance of certain actions (e.g., collecting items), evacuating in groups, and evacuees' location explain 29% of the variance of the observed pre-evacuation times.
... Later [22], developed an extensive compilation of all empirical studies carried out to date, both with people and animals, concluding that there is a lack of unification to allow studies to be comparable and reproducible. More recently [23], analyzed 116 evacuation drill reports from Canada and realized that reports with more detailed data were needed for a better scientific and practical perspective, because the reports do not collect all the same types of data that would allow comparisons between different buildings and drills, or systematic studies of different aspects linked to the results of the drills. ...
... Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. For example, even advocating the need of more data available for research, the data presented in Ref. [23] does not include the specific information related to each drill and building, thus preventing its use to feed other evacuation models. On the contrary [19], presented a dataset of five evacuation drills carried out in a primary school in Spain, with the aim that some subsets could be used for model configuration and validation. ...
To predict the effectiveness of building evacuations is a very difficult task in the general case. In a previous work, the historical results of 47 evacuation drills in 15 different university buildings, both academic and residential, involving more than 19 000 persons, was analyzed, and a method based on dimensional analysis and statistical regression was proposed to give an estimation of the exit time in case of evacuation. Comparing this estimated exit time with the real values obtained in evacuation drills, more informed decisions on whether to invest in more training and/or preventive culture of the occupants or to invest in structural improvements of the buildings can be taken. In this work, we both propose a refinement of the method to calculate expected exit times, that leads to an even better adjustment between predictions and real-world results, and we use this refined model to predict the results of evacuations of a new building, whose use and characteristics are different from those previously studied, and whose data was provided by other authors in the bibliography. We show that there exists a correlation between the published results and the predictions generated by our model, both from a quantitative and qualitative point of view.
... Since evacuation drill is more reliable and the results are more realistic, some scholars have used this approach in studying the evacuation of teaching buildings [12]. The principal limitation of the experimented method is that escapees' behaviors are quite complex and may be different even in the same scenario [13]. Moreover, it may cause additional losses, even personal injury. ...
Building evacuation safety has been one of the focal points of researchers, and there is a wealth of research findings for certain places (e.g., buildings with a high population density) or for particular research subjects (e.g., the physically challenged ethnic group). However, current publications are relatively rare in analyzing the features of physically impaired individuals in crowded places and their impact on the effectiveness of the whole evacuation process, including non-disabled people. Additionally, only such studies tend to concentrate on the behavioral characteristics of disabled people, which lack exploring and comparing evacuation optimization strategies and evaluation of comprehensive evacuation performance. This paper proposed a computer simulation-based method that combined horizontally phased evacuation and vertically phased evacuation, supplemented with the use of handicapped ramps and a reasonable arrangement of class locations, to achieve the optimal evacuation performance of a teaching building with special consideration of the heterogeneous population. And then, a simulated building model was constructed to test and compare the effectiveness and applicability of these approaches through 33 evacuation scenario studies. The results found that (1) component design can improve evacuation effectiveness, with the arrangement of ramps and the location of stair doors successfully reducing evacuation time by 12% and 6.6%, respectively; (2) a combination of two ramps and separate handicap access can decrease evacuation time by 18%; (3) the horizontal-phased evacuation approach drops evacuation time by 7.1%, but the vertical-phased evacuation strategy is not very efficient. When the two are successfully combined, evacuation time is further reduced to 9.2%; and (4) based on the above measures, the evacuation time can be finally shortened by 19% if the veteran teachers are concentrated in the classrooms on the lower floors. These obtained conclusions will provide significant reference and methodological support for the safe evacuation of other similar buildings with heterogeneous populations.
... This is based on the consideration that the EEW system provides up to about 1 min for people to leave their premises if needed. This advice is only given for those who are located up to a maximum 3rd floor, since evacuating from any floor above that would mean taking more time than there is to safely leave the building (as illustrated in other studies, where evacuation and drills are performed for purposes such as fire emergencies [46]). Nonetheless, there is substantial evidence available across scholarly and news media during earthquake drills, which has shown that individuals' protective actions largely constituted evacuation from their premises regardless of the floor they are located. ...
Human responses to various natural hazards have been studied for more than a few decades. However, the effects of early warning interventions that alert the population to allow them time to take protective actions are not well known, at least to an extent where it could be compared within a socio-culturally similar region under two different scenarios: events without early warning versus those where early warning is transmitted. To understand to what extent the behaviors of populations and their emotional reactions differ under these two scenarios, we compared individual responses to an earthquake with and without an earthquake early warning (EEW) alert of the populations’ (N = 430) from the states of Mexico, Guerrero, and Mexico City in Mexico. We considered the warnings from the Mexican Seismic Early Warning System (SASMEX) and private providers. Our results indicate that EEW potentially has implications for emotional responses and risk perception during the event and that the populations that respond to the EEW that provides a window of opportunity to perform protective actions, may not necessarily use the time adequately for life saving activities. On the other hand, population reactions to seismic events without any warning include evacuation during the event, which may have negative implications to their life safety. The results draw attention to the need of education of the public to events under two different circumstances – those with and without EEW. To further strengthen the understanding of population response, socio-technical aspects should be considered in future studies.
Hospital evacuations present unique challenges due to the dependency of patients on medical staff and specialised equipment, making the process particularly complex. This study investigates the pre-evacuation and movement phases during hospital evacuation drills conducted in New Zealand, providing rare and valuable data that are critical for improving evacuation modelling in healthcare settings. Eight evacuation drills were conducted across various hospital units, including General Ward (GW) spaces, a Hyper Acute Stroke Unit (HASU), a High Dependency Unit (HDU), and a Post-Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU), with detailed documentation and analysis of preparation times, pre-evacuation times, and evacuation speeds. The results reveal significant variability in pre-evacuation times, heavily influenced by the specific needs of different units and the evacuation methods employed (e.g., beds, wheelchairs, walking). High acuity units like the HDU, where patients require extensive medical support, exhibited notably longer active preparation times due to the complexity of disconnecting medical equipment. Additionally, horizontal movement speeds were slower for patients evacuated on beds compared to those using wheelchairs or walking. Given the rarity of such data and the uncertainty about the applicability of findings from other building types, this study underscores the need for tailored evacuation strategies that consider the distinct requirements of hospital environments. The findings highlight the importance of accounting for the dependencies on medical personnel and equipment, contributing to more accurate and effective evacuation planning in healthcare facilities. Further, the findings highlight the nuanced behaviours observed during healthcare evacuations and provide valuable inputs for fire and evacuation modellers when designing for healthcare occupancies.
Wildfire impacts are increasing due to the multiplicative effect of several factors, including climate change, increased vulnerability in the wildland-urban interface, and impacts of management decisions. This has also led to an increase in evacuations due to the number of wildfires and people affected. This study collected information on behaviour during wildfire evacuation to fill critical research gaps in human behaviour and evacuation knowledge. Seven videos of residents’ evacuations from the 2016 Fort McMurray fire were collected from public platforms. Their routes were analyzed, and notable behavioural events were recorded. The evacuees mainly used major roads before getting onto the highway (the only route available for vehicular egress). The notable behaviours observed included using opposite lanes and driving outside of marked roads to avoid congestion. Much of the observed behaviours appeared to be motivated by the surrounding traffic or fire behaviour, further supporting the need for further studies of evacuation.
Introduction. According to statistics, the greatest loss of life from fires in Russia occurs in residential buildings with a height up to 28 m. At the same time, most fire protection systems are not provided in such type of buildings. In particular, in residential buildings of mentioned above height fire alarm system maybe not. That is why the real values of the pre-evacuation time (PET) in the buildings are not known, because domestic research still has not been conducted.
Goals and objectives . The aim of the work was to establish the values of the PET of people in a residential building that is not equipped with a fire alarm system.
The main tasks were to study the time to warn building occupants about a fire and to research the time of people’s reaction to a fire warning.
Methods . The method of scientific research in this work is a full-scale experiment. In the first set of experiments focus were on warning time — it was investigated how much time it took to warn all building occupants by 1, 2 and 3 notifiers. The second set of experiments were aimed to study of people’s reaction time to a fire alarm — it was determined how long it took to start evacuating from their apartments.
Results and their discussion . Studies have shown that the value of the alert time of a nine-storey building by one, two and three notifiers averaged was 20.0, 11.6 and 7.2 min, respectively. Based on the data obtained, a mathematical model was built that allows predicting the optimal number of notifiers depending on the number of storeys in the building. Studies of people’s reaction time to a fire alarm have shown that during the daytime, on average, people need less time to realize and prepare for evacuation (72 s) than at night (112 s). Combining the results obtained allowed us to determine the optimal number of notifiers to warn all people in residential building.
Conclusion . Comparison of the experimental values of the PET with the data of the current Methodology of fire risk calculation for a nine-storey house showed a discrepancy of 2.6 times.
There are several architectural elements unique to historic and heritage designated buildings that have an impact on egress, as presented in Chap. 1. Additionally, when heritage buildings are renovated to meet modern code requirements for egress, it is in the best interest of the building to minimize interventions as much as possible to preserve heritage value. The data collected in the study is valuable to the study of emergency egress procedures in heritage buildings specifically and addresses the dearth in modern egress data in heritage buildings raised elsewhere (Thompson et al. in Fire Saf. J. 78:251–261, 2015). The implications of the architectural changes made to the building throughout its service life can be evaluated using a validated egress model, presented herein.
Evacuation drills are generally the main mechanism for improving or measuring occupant performance in emergency situations, but their effectiveness is often hard to measure, and there is limited evidence for sustained training benefits. However, innovations in technology (e.g., augmented/virtual reality, novel sensors and wearable tech) offer (when combined with new approaches to designing and delivering drills) significant opportunities for a “next generation” of evidence-based evacuation drills. In this paper, we present the findings of a recent trans-national research project; we establish the main limitations of existing drills, propose a framework for the assessment of both training and evaluation aspects of drills, make a number of recommendations, and suggest a programme of work for their implementation. The paper, therefore, provides a conceptual foundation for future work which will focus on (1) establishing an evidence-based methodology for assessing evacuation drills (and alternatives), (2) harnessing novel objective and automatable approaches to data capture/analytics in order to better characterize performance, (3), developing alternatives to the current drill model, based on emerging technologies, and (4) developing guidance for regulatory bodies on the costs and benefits of each approach for different scenarios.
In order to provide a reliable evacuation design assessment, data showing the variation in pre-movement time is of vital importance. The pre-movement time is in many cases regarded as the main time period during an evacuation assessment. Therefore, forty unannounced evacuation experiments for six different occupancies were analysed to quantify pre-movement time during building evacuation, i.e., the time taken between receiving the first cue and initiation of movement towards an exit during evacuation. The occupancies were office, cinema theatres, restaurants, department stores and night clubs. The occupancies were equipped with different types of evacuation alarm systems. The study resulted in 2486 data points for the pre-movement time. The pre-movement times were matched to statistical distributions to describe the variation. It was found that the pre-movement times in most cases could be represented with a lognormal or loglogistic distribution typically having a rapid initial increase representing the phase when people start reacting, which is followed by a less steep decrease representing the phase when some people linger before evacuating. Most reliable data are provided for the cinema theatre experiments which included 1954 data points from 30 experiments. The paper also presents a structure for performing an assessment of video recorded evacuation experiment determining actions, relevant time data and fitting a statistical distribution to the data. The new information provided in the paper can help fire safety professionals to more accurately predict the time to evacuate different premises.
Quantifying the pre-evacuation time (i.e., the time between first awareness and deliberate evacuation movement), is a key task for evacuation model users and fire safety engineers. The identification and employment of pre-evacuation data given an incident scenario is not a simple task for evacuation model users and fire safety engineers since data is typically scarce, partial and often difficult to access. In this work, we address this issue by presenting an expanded database including pre-evacuation times collected from 9 fire incidents and 103 evacuation drills involving 13,591 evacuees in 16 countries. These case studies are grouped according to the occupancy type of the structure(s) involved. We also used cluster analysis to identify sub-groups and potential factors that influence performance. Using this pre-evacuation data, we calibrate a set of pre-evacuation distributions that can be used to represent pre-evacuation data in existing building evacuation models. This work provides a useful resource for evacuation model users and fire safety engineers and also may provide additional insights to researchers into the factors that influence pre-evacuation times. Finally, this work can have an impact on future data collection and analysis by identifying the need for new data for specific occupancies.
This paper presents the results of a survey on assisted evacuation conducted with 120 hospital staff members in Sweden. Staff members included people with different roles in the hospital (e.g. doctors, nurses, department heads, etc.). The survey consisted of a questionnaire aiming at investigating the factors which affect assisted evacuation in hospitals and the current status of assisted evacuation training in Sweden. The survey included a list of questions concerning factors which were previously identified through a literature review and that they may affect the effectiveness of horizontal assisted evacuation in hospitals. Hospital staff had to evaluate the importance of these factors through a Likert-scale questionnaire. Three factors were identified in the survey by hospital staff as the most important in horizontal assisted evacuation, namely 1) coordination/collaboration between staff, 2) the patient need for assistance and 3) Training on evacuation routines. According to the questionnaire results, occupants who are in need for life-sustaining equipment can be the most difficult to evacuate. Results also show that only 52% of respondents had ever taken part into an evacuation drill and 50% had practiced how to handle evacuation aid tools needed for assisted evacuation, with rescue mattresses being the most used evacuation aid. 78% of respondents were aware of the person responsible for arranging tasks in case of an emergency situation.
This article explores how egress drills – specifically those related to fire incidents - are currently employed, their impact on safety levels, and the insights gained from them. It is suggested that neither the merits of egress drills are well understood, nor the impact on egress performance well characterized. In addition, the manner in which they are conducted varies both between and within regulatory jurisdictions. By investigating their strengths and limitations, this article suggests opportunities for their enhancement possibly through the use of other egress models to support and expand upon the benefits provided.It is by no means suggested that drills are not important to evacuation safety – only that their inconsistent use and the interpretation of the results produced may mean we (as researchers, practitioners, regulators and stakeholders) are not getting the maximum benefit out of this important tool.
On April 4, 1984 a fire occurred at the Science and Technology Center of Osaka. The building was a typical multi-purpose office building which contained the office of various learned societies whose occupants were regular users of the building, and assembly halls used by people less familiar with the premises. The purpose of this study is to form a basis for future guidlines for the evacuation of multi-purpose buildings, a building type which has become increasingly common in recent years. Our research group conducted a survey of people who were in the Center at the time of the fire using a questionnaire, and obtained detailed information about the fire and the various actions the evacuees took.
The analysis of evacuee behaviour and performance requires data on human behaviour from actual fire incidents. Unfortunately, such data is rarely collected and, if available, is often provided in different formats and levels of refinement, and does not provide sufficient narrative understanding. The lack of a standardized approach to collecting and reporting such data hinders our understanding of human behaviour in fire, theory development, as well as incident analysis and communication. In other fields, graphical notation systems are used to report events in a quick, reliable and standardized manner. This article outlines the development of a notation system that aims to better document evacuee performance. The proposed notation system is then applied to two historic case studies—the Knights of Columbus fire of 1942 and the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire of 1977—to illustrate the approach. Finally, limitations and future research needs of the presented notation system are discussed.
Evacuation is commonly used to mitigate the ill effects of a
variety of disaster agents. It is important that authorities gain an
accurate understanding of the circumstances under which citizens will
evacuate. Tests the efficacy of evacuation message clarity and
frequency, authority type, the accuracy of past warnings, and the impact
of the presence of children in the home as viable variables in effecting
an evacuation response. Finds the evacuation response was more likely to
occur if the potential victim was ordered to do so, if the potential
victim was contacted frequently (more than once) by the proper authority
(as perceived by the potential victim), if past warnings were perceived
as being accurate, and dependent children were in the home. Interviews
respondents from 83 households in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, USA, after a
major fire emergency threatened residents of three neighbourhoods
contiguous to the site.
Findings in earlier studies on fire evacuation and way finding suggest that building features have influence on evacuation behaviour. For example, way finding is believed to be strongly dependent on the lay-out of the building and seems to be hardly dependent on (escape) route signs. Though some aspects are investigated, it is not discussed at great length. In particular there is little insight in how persons find their escape route, and how this process can be supported with lay-out and design measures has been hardly examined. Thus, there is need for insight in the decision-making processes which evacuees pass through. In this paper are the results presented of 83 evacuation experiments in a hotel building at night. The main focus of the study is on way finding during fire evacuation. In the evacuation experiments we investigated the possible influence of smoke and low placed exit signs on the human fire response performance. The experiments are carried out with a traditional research method, namely the registration and evaluation of unannounced fire drills. The study is conducted as part of the validation of a new research method that makes use of serious gaming. The results of the study suggest that smoke has influence on the route choice: when no smoke is perceptible the majority of the participants escape via the main exit and when smoke blocks the route towards the main exit, the majority of the participants escape via the fire exit. Furthermore, low placed exit signs appear to have a positive influence on the use of the nearest fire exit. The personal feature of prior knowledge of the surroundings (or type of surroundings) is also found to have a positive influence on the use of the nearest fire exit. Self-assessments and interviews after a fire evacuation are found to be a disputable method for research on human behaviour in fire. A real-time observation of the people's behaviour during evacuation is considered to give more reliable results.
Problems posed by the movement of people in buildings are influenced by design features, some of which are dictated by safety
codes and standards. Over the last decade research addressing these problems has led to recommendations that depart from traditional
design and regulatory practices. Empirical studies of crowd movement suggest a more cost-effective, performance-oriented approach
to selecting egress stair widths using the “effective-width” model. Research suggests that by building stairs with larger
treads, improved visibility, and better handrails, it is possible to improve comfort and safety in normal, everyday use and
reduce the risk posed by crowd conditions in emergency egress situations.
This paper presents the results obtained from unannounced evacuations of four Marks and Spencer retail stores. By unannounced it is meant that the public and staff had no prior knowledge of the evacuations and were not informed during the evacuations by voice communication systems. The four retail stores participating in the study were chosen to represent three-storey city centre stores and single-storey out-of-town stores in different locations in the United Kingdom. The evacuations were video taped using in-house closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) orientated to cover pre-determined fields of view and additional portable cameras which were positioned and concealed when the stores were closed for business on the evenings before the evacuations. The evacuating customers were asked to complete a questionnaire by teams of researchers positioned outside, but not impeding, each emergency exit. Data sufficient for occupant characterisation and occupancy profiling for Marks and Spencer stores were obtained. Analysis of the video tapes also yielded information on total evacuation times and pre-movement times for each store. This research provided useful information, which informs the discussion in this paper of many issues relevant to the development of performance based codes, the profession and practice of fire safety engineering.
An experiment was designed to observe evacuation time and occupant movement in four apartment buildings during a simulated fire emergency. The buildings were 6–7 storeys high containing between 80 and 130 apartments and had an average population of 150 occupants. The buildings chosen were characterized as mixed occupancy housing; that is, they included adults, children, seniors and people with disabilities.The evacuation drills were recorded on video cameras located throughout the buildings. The results were analyzed regarding the behaviour of the people, the occupants' time to start to evacuate and their time to reach an outside exit. The impact of the physical organization of the buildings, the evacuation strategies and the occupants, response and movement are discussed.It was concluded that elderly people and people with disabilities did not impede the evacuation since occupants who were mobility impaired waited in their units to be rescued. In buildings 1 and 3, problems arose when the firefighters tried to communicate with occupants remaining in their units because the fire alarm was too loud and most people had moved to their balconies. Buildings 2 and 3 were typical with long delays before evacuation as some mobile occupants did not hear the fire alarm and started their evacuation only when the firefighters knocked on their doors.
Unannounced evacuation experiments in a cinema theatre were analysed. The analysis focused on investigating if people are influenced by others during the initial phase of a fire evacuation. This type of influence is called social influence. Three separate behaviour types were identified and studied and the recognition and pre-movement time was measured. The results suggest that social influence is an important factor and that it becomes more important when the fire cue, e.g., the alarm, is unclear or uninformative. Results also indicate that social influence increases with decreasing distance between visitors. This result implies that individuals are influenced more by people who are close than by people who are further away.
Occupant behaviour in fires depends upon interactions between the occupants, the building and the developing fire. Although reasonable calculation models exist for the estimation of movement time (the time required for occupants to flow out of the building), time required for behaviours taking place before the movement phase, collectively known as pre-movement time, are poorly described and quantified. A series of monitored evacuation studies and investigations of fire incidents in a range of different building types is described. Strategies for the application of behavioural data to design standards and escape time calculation methods are discussed.
This paper includes a summary of the history of investigations into calculating evacuation times. Included are the basic concepts along with selected calculation methods. Limitations of such efforts are reviewed to illustrate the limited applicability of some of the methods for actual conditions.
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