Factors Affecting Emergency Evacuation: Floor Plan Cognition and Distance

Bang-Lee Chang, Hsiao-Tung Chang, Beckham Shih-Ming Lin, Gary Li-Kai Hsiao and Yong-Jun Lin ()
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Bang-Lee Chang: Department of Architecture and Urban Design, Chinese Culture University, Taipei 11114, Taiwan
Hsiao-Tung Chang: Department of Architecture and Urban Design, Chinese Culture University, Taipei 11114, Taiwan
Beckham Shih-Ming Lin: Department of Architecture, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 106335, Taiwan
Gary Li-Kai Hsiao: Department of Disaster Management, Taiwan Police College, Taipei 11696, Taiwan
Yong-Jun Lin: Center for Weather and Climate Disaster Research, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 10, 1-23

Abstract: People tend to take their spatial cognition and wayfinding behaviors for granted while moving about in familiar spaces or traversing regular routes (e.g., the way to work). However, when an emergency occurs, even if people evacuate from a familiar venue, they are still likely to experience unexpected and irreparable tragedy. This study conducted an on-site experiment and a survey investigation. First-person view (FPV) floor plans were adopted to develop a relevant experiment, which was then used to investigate the relationship between wayfinding behavior and two influencing factors: floor plan cognition and distance. The t -tests for the accompanying questionnaire indicated that women (31%) are better than men (5.3%) in legend recognition and men (25.5%) outperform women (7.1%) in orientation; both findings achieved significance and are consistent with the results of previous studies conducted by neuroscientists. One-way ANOVA showed that when participants read a floor plan that was difficult to understand (not FPV), they took considerably more time (153.82 s) to reach the closer staircase than those who read a floor plan that was easy to understand and headed to the farther staircase (113.40 s). The understandability of floor plans is key to affecting the public’s evacuation time.

Keywords: wayfinding; behavior; legend; recognition; orientation; floor plan; distance; cognition; emergency; evacuation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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