Fire response performance in a hotel - Behavioural research

For the fire safety in buildings, the required measures are technology based. According to the Dutch Building Regulation buildings should be designed in such a way that occupants can escape by them selves in case of fire. However, case-studies show that occupants often are found to be incapable to escape in time. It is also found that occupants often not behave accordingly the assumptions in the regulations. Therefore, it is better to let the fire safety of buildings be based upon actual human behaviour in fire. In general little information is known about actual human behaviour in fires. It is mainly studied by incident evaluations and real-life experiments, such as unannounced evacuation drills. The possibilities of virtual reality for studying human behaviour in fires are so far hardly adopted by researchers. Nevertheless, since in virtual environments test persons can be faced with the phenomenon of fire in a safe way, the application of a behavioural assessment and research tool in virtual reality is expected to be a valuable supplement on the existing research methods.