Investigating Evacuation Behaviour in Retirement Facilities: Case Studies from New Zealand

Abstract

Ageing populations are generating new challenges for the safe design of buildings and infrastructure systems in communities around the world. Elderly building occupants are more likely to have mobility impairments, and in turn, require longer times and increased assistance to evacuate buildings compared with able-bodied adults. To date, only a few studies have been carried out to assess the evacuation performance of elderly evacuees in retirement homes. Therefore, it is necessary to collect critical evacuation data, such as pre-evacuation times and evacuation speeds, for these occupancy types. This work investigates the evacuation behaviour of elderly evacuees and caretaking staff using video recordings of evacuation in retirement facilities. The paper presents three case studies. The first case study includes unannounced drills, which took place in communal areas of retirement homes during a live music exhibition and in a kitchen. The second case study is a series of unannounced drills, which took place in independent living apartment buildings of a retirement facility. The last case study is of a single announced evacuation drill, which took place in a communal area of a retirement building. Qualitative results indicate that the occupants' behaviours depended on their role (i.e. resident or staff) and on the type of monitored area (i.e. apartment building or communal area). Pre-evacuation times measured in this study are in accordance with values stated in the literature, and walking speeds fall in the range of values reported in past studies of these types of building. Finally, results revealed that the use of fundamental diagrams from the SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering to assess the gap between the data provided in this work and the design curves used for buildings having mainly of adults with not walking impairments.

Investigating a university library building evacuation in Pakistan during a semi‐announced fire drill

“…It is seen that there was only one evacuee with a speed above 1.8 m/s, which is highlighted as an outlier. In line with previous studies, 17,29,51 F I G U R E 6 Pre-evacuation time distributions The unimpeded average stair walking speed was 0.97 ± 0.36 m/s, whereas the minimum and maximum speeds were 0.059 m/s and 1.24 m/s, respectively. These minimum and maximum speeds are also two common speeds of the majority of evacuees, which can be attributed (in part) to the short distance used to measure the speed.…”

“…It is seen that there was only one evacuee with a speed above 1.8 m/s, which is highlighted as an outlier. In line with previous studies, 17,29,51 a normal distribution was used to fit the horizontal speed data. The results are given in Table 4, showing a good fit with the data ( R 2 > 0.90).…”

Who and What is Trusted in Fire Incidents? The Role of Trust in Guidance and Guidance Creators in Resident Response to Fire Incidents in High-Rise Residential Buildings

“…One interpretation of these results is that participants who are elderly or have disabilities face additional challenges egressing from buildings (e.g., Hostetter & Naser, 2022;Rahouti et al, 2021;Oswald, 2021) and may be required to stay put to some extent because their personal emergency evacuation plans require them to wait for assistance from others before evacuating. While previous research has demonstrated that trust in safety procedures can influence the perception of risk by vulnerable persons (e.g., Tancogne-Dejean & Laclemence, 2016), the current study extends this to show that the perceived ability to adhere to the stay put guidance predicts both views of the guidance and also the creators of the guidance.…”

Modeling and Simulation of Crowd Pre-Evacuation Decision-Making in Complex Traffic Environments

“…Scholars have been studying pedestrian simulation in emergencies and have developed various theories of group behavior [ 7 ]. During emergency evacuation, pedestrian response is not random movement, but rather a result based on individual social characteristics.…”

“…In the case of public safety emergencies, improper pre-evacuation decisions may cause escapees a delay in escape opportunity or a wrong choice of escape route [ 5 , 6 , 7 ], which are among the main factors in building casualties. Building environment and crowd behavior are closely related.…”