Specific Evacuation Instructions Enhance Spoken Fire Warnings

Abstract

Most building fire alarms are presented auditorily and almost all are simple non-verbal sounds, such as bells and buzzers-despite the availability of inexpensive, feasible, voice-presentation technology. One advantage of speech or vocal signals is that they can convey specific avoidance instructions. This study examined the content (wording) of spoken fire alarms. Sixty-five participants rated 90 spoken fire evacuation warnings plus two non-speech sounds (white noise and a recording of an actual [simple, nonverbal] fire alarm) on a 9-point scale (0=not at all, 8=extremely) on their acceptability as a building fire alarm. Significantly higher ratings were assigned to spoken than to non-spoken warnings, except the recorded fire alarm had significantly higher ratings compared to the shortest speech warning ("Fire, Fire"). Speech warnings that provided evacuation instructions (e.g., "Use Stairs") and communicated the need to evacuate right away (e.g., "Exit Now") were rated significantly higher than those lacking that information. Implications of these results are discussed.

Using virtual reality to study the effect of information redundancy on evacuation effectiveness

“…However, the ISO evacuation signal norm (see parameters in ISO 8201: 2017) only required a simple T‐3 pattern transmitted through a single auditory modality. There is an optional choice of the supplementary speech specified by the ISO 8201: 2017 norm and researchers have suggested that the presence of a speech warning produces a strong and reliable increase in compliance compared with conditions without a speech warning (Taylor & Wogalter, 2015; Wogalter & Conzola, 2002). Nevertheless, they should validate this effect on the ISO evacuation signal considering the pre‐emergency period.…”