A Virtual Reality Exit Choice Experiment to Assess the Impact of Social Influence and Fire Wardens in a Metro Station Evacuation

IF 2.4 3区工程技术 Q2 ENGINEERING, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Fire Technology Pub Date : 2025-05-19 DOI:10.1007/s10694-025-01746-6

S. Lu, M. Rodriguez, Z. Feng, D. Paes, A. B. Daemei, R. Vancetti, S. Mander, T. Mandal, K. R. Rao, R. Lovreglio

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Abstract

Assessing evacuation time is a fundamental task in fire engineering. One of the key decisions made in evacuation dynamics is exit choice. In this work, we propose a new immersive virtual reality (VR) experiment to assess the effects of social influence and fire wardens’ instructions on the exit chosen. We also investigate if and how the perceived level of authority of the fire wardens (i.e., metro staff members or firefighters) can affect these decisions. The proposed immersive VR experiment includes 12 different scenarios during a fire evacuation in an underground metro station. A sample of 131 participants took part in the experiment, making 1048 choices. We estimate a discrete choice model to quantify if and how these factors affect the participants’ decisions. The results show that both instructions by fire wardens and social influence significantly affect exit choice and that the impact of fire wardens can change depending on their perceived level of authority.

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地铁车站疏散中社会影响和消防管理员影响的虚拟现实出口选择实验

疏散时间评估是消防工程中的一项基本任务。疏散动力学中的关键决策之一是出口选择。在这项工作中，我们提出了一个新的沉浸式虚拟现实（VR）实验，以评估社会影响和消防管理员的指示对出口选择的影响。我们还调查了消防管理员（即地铁工作人员或消防员）的感知权限级别是否以及如何影响这些决策。拟建的沉浸式VR实验包括12个不同的场景，场景发生在地铁站的火灾疏散过程中。131名参与者参加了这项实验，做出了1048个选择。我们估计了一个离散选择模型来量化这些因素是否以及如何影响参与者的决策。结果表明，消防管理员的指示和社会影响对消防管理员的出口选择都有显著的影响，并且消防管理员的影响会随其感知到的权威水平而变化。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Fire Technology 工程技术-材料科学：综合

CiteScore

6.60

自引率

14.70%

发文量

137

审稿时长

7.5 months

期刊介绍： Fire Technology publishes original contributions, both theoretical and empirical, that contribute to the solution of problems in fire safety science and engineering. It is the leading journal in the field, publishing applied research dealing with the full range of actual and potential fire hazards facing humans and the environment. It covers the entire domain of fire safety science and engineering problems relevant in industrial, operational, cultural, and environmental applications, including modeling, testing, detection, suppression, human behavior, wildfires, structures, and risk analysis. The aim of Fire Technology is to push forward the frontiers of knowledge and technology by encouraging interdisciplinary communication of significant technical developments in fire protection and subjects of scientific interest to the fire protection community at large. It is published in conjunction with the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE). The mission of NFPA is to help save lives and reduce loss with information, knowledge, and passion. The mission of SFPE is advancing the science and practice of fire protection engineering internationally.