Unannounced Evacuation Experiment in a High-Rise Hotel Building with Evacuation Elevators: A Study of Evacuation Behaviour Using Eye-Tracking

Abstract

Past studies suggest that people are often reluctant to use occupant evacuation elevators in case of fire. However, existing research is scarce and current knowledge is based on questionnaire studies and laboratory experiments. An unannounced evacuation experiment was therefore performed on the 16th floor of a 35-floor high-rise hotel building. Sixty-seven participants took part and eye-tracking glasses were used to collect data on exit choice and eye fixations. Three different scenarios were studied, including two different hotel room locations on the floor and a variation of guidance system for one of these locations, i.e., flashing green lights next to the evacuation sign at the elevators. Results suggest that people typically choose the elevator for evacuation, even if their hotel room was located closer to the evacuation stair. Flashing green lights next to an evacuation sign made people look more at this sign. However, in spite of looking more at the sign, the flashing light was not shown to significantly improve compliance with the sign. Also, the results suggest that a detector activated self-closing fire door without vision panels to the elevator lobby made it more difficult to find the evacuation elevators in an emergency.

A Study on Evacuation Behavior in Physical and Virtual Reality Experiments

“…This experiment is referred to here as the CAVE experiment, because it used a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE). The second experiment was conducted by Mossberg, Nilsson, and Andre´e [14] is referred to here as the physical experiment, because it took place in the existing building. The third experiment is referred to as the HMD experiment, because it was per-formed in VR using a Head Mounted Display (HMD), and it has not been published before this paper.…”

“…Virtual Reality (VR) has been used for data collection in the field of Human Behavior in Fire for many years. Several studies have been conducted on wayfinding [8,11], behavior during emergencies [5,12], and system design [11,14,15,19]. The extrapolation of results from VR to the real-world evacuation, however, *Correspondence should be addressed to: Silvia Arias, E-mail: silvia.arias@brand.lth.se Fire Technology Ó 2021 The Author(s) Manufactured in The United States https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-021-01172-4 needs special attention.…”

“…As such, the data presented here should not be considered representative of the evacuation behavior of hotel occupants. This is especially valid since the physical experiment conducted by Mossberg, Nilsson, and Andre´e [14] also does not consider their sample of participants representative of the expected occupancy type in a hotel. The differences they list include the fact that participants signed up for the experiment and came to the hotel under the guise of a study on interior design, had no luggage with them, were awake and had only been in the hotel for a short while before the alarm went off.…”

Optimal Installation Location of Escape Route Signs at T-Type Intersections

“…To overcome this limitation, various studies have been conducted regarding the development of efficient signs and the designation of their optimal installation locations. Prior studies have attempted to increase the affordance of signs, considering variables such as size [9,10], brightness [11], colors and graphics [12][13][14][15], lighting method [16][17][18][19][20], and smoke [21,22]. These studies have been successful in improving signs' affordances, by altering the performance of signs, but no analysis has been conducted on the interaction between signs and humans that considers the installation location or arrow directions.…”

A survey‐based study concerning public comprehension of two‐component EXIT/NO‐EXIT signage concepts

“…Thus, there is a clear need to improve conventional emergency signage so that they can attract attention when they need to be conspicuous, to redirect people in an evolving emergency, and to identify, not just an exit route, but a viable exit route. This has driven the pursuit for a new generation of advanced emergency signage system to improve public safety in buildings for a number of years, [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] with several new dynamic signage concepts already appearing in the market, for example. [28][29][30][31] In emergency evacuation situations, time is critical and so in addition to improved detectability, it is also important that the intended message conveyed by the sign can be clearly comprehended by the public.…”