Galea, Edwin R. ORCID: 0000-0002-0001-6665 , Markus, Sauter, Deere, Steven J. ORCID: 0000-0001-5171-2014 and Filippidis, Lazaros ORCID: 0000-0002-1852-0042 (2015) Investigating the impact of culture on evacuation response behaviour. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Human Behaviour in Fire, 2015. Human Behaviour in Fire, 6 . Interscience Communications Ltd, London, pp. 351-360. ISBN 978-0-9933933-0-3

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Abstract

The aim of this work was to investigate whether social culture impacts how people respond to an evacuation alarm. As part of this work four unannounced library evacuations were conducted in the Czech Republic, Turkey, Poland and the UK. In an attempt to isolate social culture as the primary independent variable across the trials, the key parameters that are known to influence Response Phase behaviour and performance e.g. population demographics, type of structure, alarm system, etc were controlled across the trials. Response Phase behaviour was determined for a total of 477 individuals, 192 from Poland, 51 from Turkey, 70 from the Czech Republic and 104 from the UK. The results suggest that there are significant differences in the nature of the population behaviour during the Response Phase across the four trials. On average, the population with the quickest to the slowest response times are: Turkey, Poland, UK and Czech Republic. When applied to a simulated evacuation, the observed differences in response time distribution for the national groups resulted in significantly different evacuation performance.

Item Type:	Conference Proceedings
Title of Proceedings:	Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Human Behaviour in Fire, 2015
Additional Information:	Conference held on 28-30 September 2015, Downing College, Cambridge, UK
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences Faculty of Engineering & Science > Centre for Numerical Modelling & Process Analysis (CNMPA) > Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG)
Related URLs:	Organisation
Last Modified:	18 Feb 2020 16:20
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/14352

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