Researchers at CASE have investigated how exit choice is influenced by the presence of wheelchair users, and the design of the exits. Virtual Reality was used to design an experiment.
– Results show that exit choice was positively influenced by other people choosing the exit. Especially when the other person was a wheelchair user, indicating altruistic behaviours, says Enrico Ronchi, senior lecturer at Division of Fire safety Engineering, at LTH Faculty of engineering.
He is one of the authors of a new publication in this field.
Gives better knowledge in future design
The design of the exit also influenced the exit choice of the participants. These results are useful to fire safety engineers to design evacuation.
Increased accessibility means that buildings now host a diverse range of populations. While providing accessible evacuation, it may be necessary to direct people to different evacuation paths depending on their functional capacity. The presence of wheelchair users may affect the evacuation decision of others.
Read the publication