New FSE wiki article: Human behaviour in fire (written by Kimi Code CLI) |
Add diagrams fse-human-behaviour-in-fire-v1.svg, fse-human-behaviour-in-fire-v2.svg, fse-human-behaviour-in-fire-v3.svg (level-1 visual plan) |
||
| Line 20: | Line 20: | ||
After recognition and validation, a person defines the situation and evaluates possible responses. Bryan's process model includes commitment to an action and reassessment if it is incomplete or conditions change. Behaviour is thus a sequence rather than one irreversible choice.<ref name="Bryan-3-319" /> | After recognition and validation, a person defines the situation and evaluates possible responses. Bryan's process model includes commitment to an action and reassessment if it is incomplete or conditions change. Behaviour is thus a sequence rather than one irreversible choice.<ref name="Bryan-3-319" /> | ||
[[File:fse-human-behaviour-in-fire-v1.svg|thumb|upright=1.5|alt=Recognition leads through validation, evaluation and commitment, with feedback for reassessment.|Human response includes decisions and reassessment over time. Based on Bryan (2002), pp. 3-318–3-319.]] | |||
The [[Protective action decision model]] provides another way to examine how people reach protective decisions. The important engineering issue is the connection between environmental cues, communication, interpretation and action. A model should not assume that information automatically produces the intended response.<ref name="Bryan-3-318" /><ref name="Proulx-3-348" /> | The [[Protective action decision model]] provides another way to examine how people reach protective decisions. The important engineering issue is the connection between environmental cues, communication, interpretation and action. A model should not assume that information automatically produces the intended response.<ref name="Bryan-3-318" /><ref name="Proulx-3-348" /> | ||
| Line 36: | Line 37: | ||
[[Affiliative behaviour]] is the tendency to seek or remain with people who have emotional ties. Family members may gather before leaving, and groups may travel together. This can increase preparation time while also providing assistance and shared information.<ref name="Proulx-3-344" /> | [[Affiliative behaviour]] is the tendency to seek or remain with people who have emotional ties. Family members may gather before leaving, and groups may travel together. This can increase preparation time while also providing assistance and shared information.<ref name="Proulx-3-344" /> | ||
[[File:fse-human-behaviour-in-fire-v2.svg|thumb|upright=1.5|alt=People gather family members, share information and move together at the group's pace.|Evacuation is often a social process rather than isolated individual movement. Based on Proulx (2002), pp. 3-344–3-347.]] | |||
Group movement can be limited by a slower member. Proulx gives the example of a family moving with a child or older person. An individual walking-speed value may therefore be inappropriate for the group as a whole.<ref name="Proulx-3-346">Proulx (2002), pp. 3-346–3-347.</ref> | Group movement can be limited by a slower member. Proulx gives the example of a family moving with a child or older person. An individual walking-speed value may therefore be inappropriate for the group as a whole.<ref name="Proulx-3-346">Proulx (2002), pp. 3-346–3-347.</ref> | ||
| Line 72: | Line 74: | ||
Smoke can reduce visibility and slow movement. ABCB's 2020 review found a lack of reliable general correlations for predicting walking speed in smoke. Its numerical modification factors are tied to the Australian verification method and should retain that context.<ref name="ABCB-280">Australian Building Codes Board (2020), pp. 280–282.</ref> | Smoke can reduce visibility and slow movement. ABCB's 2020 review found a lack of reliable general correlations for predicting walking speed in smoke. Its numerical modification factors are tied to the Australian verification method and should retain that context.<ref name="ABCB-280">Australian Building Codes Board (2020), pp. 280–282.</ref> | ||
[[File:fse-human-behaviour-in-fire-v3.svg|thumb|upright=1.5|alt=An occupant slows in irritant smoke and considers another route or waiting for assistance.|Smoke can alter walking speed and route choice. Based on Australian Building Codes Board (2020), pp. 280–282.]] | |||
Irritant smoke can affect the eyes and willingness to continue. ABCB notes that occupants may seek an alternative path or wait for assistance under its stated conditions. Route choice can therefore change after movement has begun.<ref name="ABCB-282">Australian Building Codes Board (2020), p. 282.</ref> | Irritant smoke can affect the eyes and willingness to continue. ABCB notes that occupants may seek an alternative path or wait for assistance under its stated conditions. Route choice can therefore change after movement has begun.<ref name="ABCB-282">Australian Building Codes Board (2020), p. 282.</ref> | ||
Revision as of 08:11, 2 November 2026
Human behaviour in fire is the way people perceive, interpret and respond to a developing fire and its warnings. It includes recognition of cues, decisions about action, interaction with other people and movement towards safety. Behaviour can also include investigating, warning others, collecting belongings or attempting another protective action.[1][2]
People do not always evacuate immediately after an alarm. Initial information can be ambiguous, and occupants may seek confirmation before deciding what to do. Familiarity, alertness, responsibilities, social relationships and the building layout influence the response.[3]
Research challenges the assumption that fire behaviour is dominated by irrational panic. Proulx reports that reasonable and altruistic actions are common, while panic is rare in the reviewed fire incidents. Engineering models should represent this range of behaviour instead of treating occupants as either passive objects or reckless crowds.[4][1]
Perception and interpretation
A fire cue can be an alarm, smoke odour, visible smoke, flame, heat, noise or information from another person. Each cue supplies different evidence about the event. The observer must notice it and decide whether it indicates an emergency.[5]
Bryan describes recognition as the identification of ambiguous cues as a fire incident. Recognition can be delayed when the signs are weak or consistent with a normal event. The observer's prior experience and expectation of a favourable outcome can influence this interpretation.[6]
Validation follows when a person seeks confirmation that the initial interpretation is correct. This may involve looking for additional cues or asking other people. The process can reduce uncertainty but also consumes time before evacuation begins.[6]
Warning systems provide different amounts of information. A bell announces a signal but not its cause or the required action. Directive voice messages can explain the incident and the response, although conflicting visual cues can undermine their credibility.[5]
Repeated unwanted alarms can reduce the credibility of a warning. Proulx describes occupants becoming less willing to investigate or respond when false alarms are frequent. The alarm system's operational history therefore becomes part of the behavioural context.[7]
Decision processes and protective action
After recognition and validation, a person defines the situation and evaluates possible responses. Bryan's process model includes commitment to an action and reassessment if it is incomplete or conditions change. Behaviour is thus a sequence rather than one irreversible choice.[8]
The Protective action decision model provides another way to examine how people reach protective decisions. The important engineering issue is the connection between environmental cues, communication, interpretation and action. A model should not assume that information automatically produces the intended response.[6][3]
Possible actions are not limited to flight. Bryan describes decisions that can include obtaining an extinguisher, activating an alarm, seeking refuge or evacuating. The chosen response reflects the person's location, perceived threat and assessment of available options.[6]
A person can also change actions after receiving new information. Smoke along a route, a staff message or the behaviour of companions may trigger reassessment. Static calculations that assign one action at the start cannot capture those changes.[8]
Perceived time available is part of evaluation. Sime's work discussed by Bryan links this perception to information about fire location and development. Unclear or contradictory messages can therefore affect both the action selected and its timing.[6]
Social influence and affiliation
The presence of other people changes cue interpretation. Bryan describes experiments in which passive companions inhibited reporting of introduced smoke. These specific findings illustrate social influence, not a universal delay for every public occupancy.[9]
People can mimic adaptive as well as nonadaptive responses. Observing others investigate, warn or evacuate can supply information about what is happening. Staff behaviour can consequently provide a strong cue when an alarm alone is ambiguous.[7][8]
Affiliative behaviour is the tendency to seek or remain with people who have emotional ties. Family members may gather before leaving, and groups may travel together. This can increase preparation time while also providing assistance and shared information.[4]
Group movement can be limited by a slower member. Proulx gives the example of a family moving with a child or older person. An individual walking-speed value may therefore be inappropriate for the group as a whole.[10]
Responsibility also affects response. Proulx contrasts occupants who expect to manage their own household alarm with visitors who wait for instructions from building staff. The distribution of expected responsibility should be considered when assigning warning and management roles.[7]
Pre-movement activities
Pre-movement time is the period before directed evacuation travel begins. It includes perception, interpretation and preparatory action, and it may involve movement within the current space. It should not be imagined as everyone waiting motionless for one fixed duration.[3]
Observed activities include dressing, collecting children or pets, securing work, gathering belongings and contacting staff. These tasks respond to personal circumstances and the information available. Their duration can vary between occupants in the same building.[11]
Proulx's residential drills showed different response times between buildings and warning conditions. Poor alarm audibility and the arrival of other cues affected when people left. The values belong to those case studies and should not be used as universal delays.[11]
New Zealand's C/VM2, second edition, 2025, assigns pre-travel times by occupant state, familiarity, alarm signal and location relative to the fire. These are regulatory design inputs for that method. They do not eliminate the need to establish the relevant population and cue conditions.[12]
Direct cues such as seeing or smelling smoke may be available near the fire, while remote occupants may rely on indirect information. C/VM2 limits when indirect cues can be assumed in its method. Social interaction and spatial arrangement therefore matter to timing analysis.[13]
Panic and cooperative behaviour
Panic is often used as a general explanation for crowd emergencies, but fire research does not support treating it as the usual response. Proulx's summary identifies panic as rare and altruistic, reasonable behaviour as common. People often act on limited and ambiguous information.[4]
Competitive rushing in some crowd incidents should not automatically be labelled as irrational panic. Proulx distinguishes different crowd phenomena and discusses density, blocked movement and communication failures. The physical conditions can create forces and risks without requiring a crowd-wide loss of reason.[14]
Cooperation can include warning others, assisting with movement and sharing responsibility. Bryan reports purposeful, altruistic responses as frequent in the reviewed incidents. Such behaviour can improve some outcomes while adding actions that a simple evacuation model omits.[1]
Assuming universal panic can lead to the wrong engineering question. Instead of asking only how to suppress irrational behaviour, the analysis should examine whether information, routes and assistance match occupants' needs. Many delays arise from uncertainty and social commitments rather than uncontrolled emotion.[3][6]
This does not mean that dangerous crowding never occurs. It means that each incident requires examination of density, route capacity, information and group interaction. A single emotional label cannot replace that analysis.[14]
Movement and changing conditions
Walking speed is one part of evacuation movement, but it changes with density, route geometry, occupant characteristics and smoke. Proulx describes speed decreasing as crowding constrains movement. Clear-air unrestricted walking is not a universal emergency value.[10]
On stairs, movement depends on step geometry and crowding as well as individual ability. Queues can form when demand exceeds the capacity of a route element. The time spent waiting is different from the time spent walking towards that restriction.[15]
Smoke can reduce visibility and slow movement. ABCB's 2020 review found a lack of reliable general correlations for predicting walking speed in smoke. Its numerical modification factors are tied to the Australian verification method and should retain that context.[16]
Irritant smoke can affect the eyes and willingness to continue. ABCB notes that occupants may seek an alternative path or wait for assistance under its stated conditions. Route choice can therefore change after movement has begun.[17]
Evacuation joins these movement processes to the earlier response stages. Total time includes warning, interpretation, preparation and travel to the place of safety. Treating walking speed as the entire evacuation would omit important sources of delay and variation.[15]
Building and occupant characteristics
Familiarity with the building affects both route choice and information seeking. Proulx reports a preference for familiar entry routes in many situations. Emergency routes that occupants have never experienced may need clearer guidance and staff support.[2]
Alertness influences the response to an alarm. Sleeping occupants can require longer to recognise and prepare for action, while people focused on an activity may initially disregard other cues. C/VM2 reflects some of these differences in its method-specific inputs.[12][7]
Physical, sensory or cognitive limitations can change preparation and movement. Proulx includes these among occupant characteristics that can extend response time. The analysis should represent the people expected to use the building rather than an assumed uniformly able population.[7]
Visual access to other occupants can provide information. Open spaces allow people to observe group responses, while separate rooms can limit that cue. Building layout thus affects both direct wayfinding and social interpretation of the event.[7]
Staff training and availability can alter the timing. Proulx describes staff prompting occupants and providing building-specific directions. Their effectiveness depends on recognition, authority, coverage of the occupied space and consistency with other cues.[7]
Modelling and evidence limits
Evacuation models often simplify human behaviour. IFEG describes assumptions of simultaneous departure, uninterrupted movement and excellent knowledge of the shortest route. Those simplifications can help examine capacity but do not provide a complete behavioural prediction.[18]
A model should be suited to the occupancy and layout. A simple approach may fail to identify local queues or group decisions in a complex building. Expensive software does not guarantee better input data or a more faithful account of human response.[19]
Case studies and drills provide evidence about particular populations and conditions. Warning credibility, staff action, notice and weather can influence the observations. Results should retain those circumstances instead of being transferred as universal occupant constants.[11]
Interview evidence also requires careful interpretation. Recalled timings can be uncertain, and people may have experienced only part of the event. Proulx presents such studies as valuable context rather than exact measurements applicable to every incident.[11]
The engineering record should state which behaviours are represented and which are omitted. Response time, affiliation, assistance and route choice may all affect the result. Explicit assumptions make it possible to examine whether a design remains adequate when those assumptions change.[19][13]
A behavioural design review should begin with the cues available at each occupied location. An alarm heard in an open office, a smoke odour in a closed room and a staff message in a public hall provide different information. Their timing and credibility should be assessed where the occupant actually receives them.[5][7]
Warning content should support the intended action. A person who needs to choose a route or assist someone else requires more than an undifferentiated alert. Voice and staff messages can provide that information, but conflicting cues should be identified rather than ignored.[5]
Population descriptions should include familiarity, alertness, group relationships and assistance needs. These characteristics affect both preparation and movement. An average occupant who is awake, alone and familiar with every exit would not represent all building users.[7][12]
The distribution of staff also matters. A trained person can prompt action only where occupants can see or hear that direction. Large or subdivided spaces may need different coverage, and the staff response itself belongs in the evacuation timeline.[7]
Pre-movement should be evaluated as observable activities rather than as an arbitrary safety factor. Investigation, gathering others and preparing for travel have causes that can be examined. This makes it possible to assess how better information or management could change the delay.[3][11]
Route assessment should allow for social and physical changes during travel. Groups can slow to assist a member, and smoke can cause people to reject the initial path. A shortest-route calculation with fixed speeds would not show those decisions.[10][17]
Model results should be checked against plausible actions in the actual building. If occupants normally enter through one route, it is useful to examine whether they will find and accept another under emergency conditions. That question connects spatial layout with human response.[2]
Documenting these assumptions makes the behavioural analysis open to review. The record should distinguish observed evidence, prescribed inputs and modelling simplifications. This allows the effects of different warning systems, occupant groups and staff arrangements to be examined without presenting any one behaviour as universal.[19][11]
See also
Notes
[5] [9] [6] [8] [4] [15] [11] [7]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Bryan (2002), pp. 3-315–3-319.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Proulx (2002), pp. 3-342–3-344.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Proulx (2002), pp. 3-348–3-351.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Proulx (2002), pp. 3-344–3-345.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Bryan (2002), pp. 3-315–3-316.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 Bryan (2002), pp. 3-318–3-319.
- ↑ 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 7.10 Proulx (2002), pp. 3-350–3-351.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Bryan (2002), p. 3-319.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Bryan (2002), pp. 3-317–3-318.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Proulx (2002), pp. 3-346–3-347.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 Proulx (2002), pp. 3-348–3-350.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (2025), pp. 29–31.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (2025), p. 31.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Proulx (2002), pp. 3-345–3-346.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Proulx (2002), pp. 3-347–3-348.
- ↑ Australian Building Codes Board (2020), pp. 280–282.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 Australian Building Codes Board (2020), p. 282.
- ↑ Australian Building Codes Board et al. (2005), pp. 2.8-3–2.8-4.
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Australian Building Codes Board et al. (2005), p. 2.8-4.
References
- Australian Building Codes Board. (2020). Fire safety verification method data sheets (Version 1.1). Author.
- Australian Building Codes Board, National Research Council of Canada, International Code Council, & Department of Building and Housing New Zealand. (2005). International fire engineering guidelines (2005 ed.). Australian Building Codes Board.
- Bryan, J. L. (2002). Behavioral response to fire and smoke. In P. J. DiNenno (Ed.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed.). National Fire Protection Association.
- Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. (2025). C protection from fire: Verification method C/VM2 (2nd ed.). New Zealand Government.
- Proulx, G. (2002). Movement of people: The evacuation timing. In P. J. DiNenno (Ed.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed.). National Fire Protection Association.