B026 Fire alarm response

Behavioural responses to fire alarm in high-rise buildings in Hong Kong

Brief:

In order to develop a good fire safety management plan, it is very important to understand the behavior of building occupants in the case of a fire. Physical factors of a building such as direct distance, travel distance, location of fire and exit width are considered dominant in many building emergency evacuation plans. Occupant factors, physiological conditions and behavioural responses can have significant effects on an evacuation; however, they were not considered properly in certain designs. Indeed, building occupants were treated as ‘items’ rather than people. Designers would assume that, for their fire safety plan, all building occupants would recognize the fire alarm cues once the fire detection system was activated and all of them would begin to evacuate immediately. Evacuees with similar speeds at certain crowd densities would also be assumed in calculating the probable evacuation time. In this study, behavioural responses of building occupants to fire alarm cues in high-rise buildings in Hong Kong were studied by a survey of 327 occupants who were divided into two groups where Group 1 had experienced a building fire before while Group 2 had not. In particular, a questionnaire was developed concerning the responses of occupants and their reactions to an audible fire alarm cue in a fire emergency and their choices of an evacuation route. The results showed that past experience of fire incidents might have significant influences on an occupant’s perception of an audible fire alarm cue: Group 1 might take a shorter response time in comparison with Group 2. Some Group 2 occupants would treat the fire alarms as false alarms (or fire alarm sounder test) and they would only start looking for more information of the continuous alarm sound after a minute or so. The results also indicated that most occupants recognized an audible fire alarm as a ‘warning’ rather than a ‘signal for evacuation’. For the evacuation, most occupants preferred a staircase to an elevator. It was reported that for a high-rise building, the choice of evacuation route would not be affected by the floor level where an evacuee started. Responses of occupants in different age groups were also observed.

This work forms part of an undergraduate final year project. Student: Sui WH.

Related publication.

Further information:

Fong NK, Wong LT, Sui WH, 2005. Behavioural responses to fire alarm in high-rise buildings in Hong Kong, Proceedings of the 2005 Asia-Pacific Conference on Risk Management and Safety-Challenges in Engineering Applications and Advances in Technologies, Hong Kong Association of risk Management and Safety, Kowloon Shangri-La Hotel, Hong Kong, 1-2 Dec, pp. 184-191