Study On Individual And Small Groups Behaviors In High-rise Building Evacuation

Emergency evacuation in high-rise buildings is facing with many new challenges.Firstly,only stairs can be used during evacuation in high-rise building according to existing building codes.However,some special groups of populations cannot escape successful due to poor physical conditions.Secondly,it is easy for occupants to feel panic and nervous in high-rise buildings.To copy with these,more occupants intend to stay together with others or follow others in high-rise building evacuation.In addition,due to the relations in some groups,occupants are easy to show the following behavior,grouping behavior and herding behavior.More than 30 multi-mode evacuation experiments in high-rise buildings have been carried out in past two years.Evacuation system,eye tracking system,fMRI and social network method are all used to study the behaviors in the evacuation experiments.Based on these data,individual behaviors and small group behaviors are discussed.Results of investigation are presented as follows:1.Conduct 30 evacuation experiments to study special individual and group behaviors.Participants consist of various individuals and groups considering various social bonds,such as classmates,groups,friends,families and so on,particularly,some oldly persons and children also attend the experiments.2.By social network analysis method,make quantitative studies on the effects of social relation on following behaviors and small group behaviors during evacuation.3.Opinion leaders in normal condition and leaders in evacuation in typical groups are discussed.The characteristic of leaders during evacuation are investigated from aspects of physiological factors,psychological factors,speeds and stability.These results are helpful to predict the potential leaders during evacuation in advance and make appropriate strategies in evacuation.