Human Behavior in Home Fires

Human Behavior in Home Fires
Author: Stanley Gilbert
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021
Genre: Fires
ISBN:

Casualties in fires--and in particular, deaths--are tail events. The average fire does not cause deaths or injuries. There is increasing evidence that the people susceptible to dying in fires are a specific subset of the people in homes. It seems likely that the same holds true of the fire and the environment as well. That is, that it is a suite of circumstances that produce deaths (and to a lesser extent injuries) in fires. While there has been a lot of valuable work aimed at identifying characteristics associated with deaths in fire, there has been little aimed at identifying those suites of conditions that produce fire deaths. One that can be readily identified is a cigarette fire ignited on or in the immediate vicinity of a person who is frail. Other suites of circumstances are less clear. There are a number of observations that can be made based on the research regarding fire in domestic environments. The large majority of fires are not reported to the fire department, and evidence suggests that the majority of those fires are put out by the people on site. This occurs in spite of the frequent admonition to Get out, Stay out.... \cite{thompson_2015}. It is a reminder that people do not necessarily always act in accordance with fire-safety messaging. The typical engineering approach to fire design--ASET/RSET--does not explicitly capture all observed behaviors in domestic fires. The basic assumption of the approach is that people react to a fire by evacuating, and that the time to evacuate is mostly independent of the fire. But these assumptions break down for domestic fires. A different approach is warranted for fire design for domestic spaces.

SFPE Guide to Human Behavior in Fire

SFPE Guide to Human Behavior in Fire
Author: Society of Fire Protection Engineers
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2018-11-14
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319946978

This single resource for the fire safety community distills the most relevant and useful science and research into a consensus-based guide whose key factors and considerations impact the response and behavior of occupants of a building during a fire event. The Second Edition of SFPE's Engineering Guide: Human Behavior in Fire provides a common introduction to this field for the broad fire safety community: fire protection engineers/fire safety engineers, human behavior scientists/researchers, design professionals, and code authorities. The public benefits from consistent understanding of the factors that influence the responses and behaviors of people when threatened by fire and the application of reliable methodologies to evaluate and estimate human response in buildings and structures. This Guide also aims to lessen the uncertainties in the "people components" of fire safety and allow for more refined analysis with less reliance on arbitrary safety factors. As with fire science in general, our knowledge of human behavior in fire is growing, but is still characterized by uncertainties that are traceable to both limitation in the science and unfamiliarity by the user communities. The concepts for development of evacuation scenarios for performance-based designs and the technical methods to estimate evacuation response are reviewed with consideration to the limitation and uncertainty of the methods. This Guide identifies both quantitative and qualitative information that constitutes important consideration prior to developing safety factors, exercising engineering judgment, and using evacuation models in the practical design of buildings and evacuation procedures. Besides updating material in the First Edition, this revision includes new information on: Incapacitating Effects of Fire Effluent & Toxicity Analysis Methods Occupant Behavior Scnearios Movement Models and Behavioral Models Egress Model Selection, Verification, and Validation Estimation of Uncertainty and Use of Safety Factors Enhancing Human Response to Emergencies & Notification of Messaging The prediction of human behavior during a fire emergency is one of the most challenging areas of fire protection engineering. Yet, understanding and considering human factors is essential to designing effective evacuation systems, ensuring safety during a fire and related emergency events, and accurately reconstructing a fire.

The Benefits of Behavioral Research to the Fire Service

The Benefits of Behavioral Research to the Fire Service
Author: Peter W. Blaich
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2008-02-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780595606436

Previously, Fire Safety Engineers worked under a simple assumption that when a fire alarm activated, people will evacuation immediately. It was believed that how quickly people managed to evacuate a building depended mainly on physical abilities as well as the location of the nearest exit and the behavior of the fire. But work by Behavioral Scientists has found that this idea falls considerably short. Research now shows that as much as two thirds of the time it takes occupants to exit a building after the fire alarm sounds is startup time or time spent milling about and looking for more information. Ultimately, such a finding has big implications for architects, engineers and fire protection specialists hoping to design safer buildings. Subsequently, after the 9/11 terrorists attack this new way of thinking based on Human Behavior in Fire and Emergencies is getting more attention and funding. Studying how occupants react as events unfolded and finding out what helped or hindered the evacuation efforts during the 9/11 attacks has provided invaluable information for future building designs. Ultimately, it is the author of this book believes that this is going to impact structured emergency preparedness in a major way. The basic premise of this book is that design should be human-centered because it humancentered design that provides for the information that people need to adapt to the chaotic and uncertain way that fire develops.

Fires and Human Behaviour

Fires and Human Behaviour
Author: David Canter
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2024-06-03
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1040052363

This second edition of Fires and Human Behaviour was originally published in 1990 and since the first edition in 1980 there continued to be considerable loss of life in small and large fires throughout the world. The most significant of these from a behavioural point of view was the Kings Cross underground station in 1988. This was a relatively small fire caused by inappropriate human actions. What appeared to remain timeless and of value ten years after the first edition was published were the details of what actually happens in fires and the psychological models that emerged from studying those details. This second edition was therefore edited to keep the original detailed case studies and to add information about some major incidents that had occurred since 1980.

Human Behavior in Fire Emergencies

Human Behavior in Fire Emergencies
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2003
Genre: Buildings
ISBN:

This is a compilation of material of the latest specialized information on human behavior in fire emergencies.

SFPE Guide to Human Behavior in Fire

SFPE Guide to Human Behavior in Fire
Author: SFPE
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2018-11-19
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9783319946962

This single resource for the fire safety community distills the most relevant and useful science and research into a consensus-based guide whose key factors and considerations impact the response and behavior of occupants of a building during a fire event. The Second Edition of SFPE's Engineering Guide: Human Behavior in Fire provides a common introduction to this field for the broad fire safety community: fire protection engineers/fire safety engineers, human behavior scientists/researchers, design professionals, and code authorities. The public benefits from consistent understanding of the factors that influence the responses and behaviors of people when threatened by fire and the application of reliable methodologies to evaluate and estimate human response in buildings and structures. This Guide also aims to lessen the uncertainties in the "people components" of fire safety and allow for more refined analysis with less reliance on arbitrary safety factors. As with fire science in general, our knowledge of human behavior in fire is growing, but is still characterized by uncertainties that are traceable to both limitation in the science and unfamiliarity by the user communities. The concepts for development of evacuation scenarios for performance-based designs and the technical methods to estimate evacuation response are reviewed with consideration to the limitation and uncertainty of the methods. This Guide identifies both quantitative and qualitative information that constitutes important consideration prior to developing safety factors, exercising engineering judgment, and using evacuation models in the practical design of buildings and evacuation procedures. Besides updating material in the First Edition, this revision includes new information on: Incapacitating Effects of Fire Effluent & Toxicity Analysis Methods Occupant Behavior Scnearios Movement Models and Behavioral Models Egress Model Selection, Verification, and Validation Estimation of Uncertainty and Use of Safety Factors Enhancing Human Response to Emergencies & Notification of Messaging The prediction of human behavior during a fire emergency is one of the most challenging areas of fire protection engineering. Yet, understanding and considering human factors is essential to designing effective evacuation systems, ensuring safety during a fire and related emergency events, and accurately reconstructing a fire.