Emergency responders’ safety in fire evacuation and rescue: Exploring safety awareness and decision-making aiming at multiple firefighting operations

With the vigorous development of new media technology, wechat applet is in the stage of blowout development. Based on wechat platform, and combined with the public’s cognition of fire safety knowledge, the fire evacuation and rescue applet is designed by wechat developer tools, cloud computing platform and other tools. The applet includes many modules such as evacuation plan display, fire plan display, fire tips, plan inquiry, fire publicity video and hidden danger report and so on. In the event of a fire, the applet can enable the public to acquire the knowledge of fire safety precautions and evacuation paths of the places where they are located timely. Also, the applet can help commanders get the fire emergency plan at the first time, have a preliminary understanding of the driving route, water source information and the basic situation of the unit on the way if reinforcements are needed in other district. So the fire evacuation and rescue applet can provide a timely and effective way for the public to popularize fire common knowledge. All of these functions can enhance people’s awareness of fire safety and reduce losses in case of fire.

Aim: The article explores the application of virtual reality (VR) and the metaverse environment in education aimed at enhancing safety of road traffic and tourism awareness. The research emphasizes the interconnection between tourism and public safety, particularly in unfamiliar urban or natural environments where tourists are exposed to increased risks due to limited knowledge of local traffic rules and geography. The primary goal of the work is to identify and present the potential of immersive virtual technologies as tools for building competencies in safe behaviour for both everyday road users and tourists undertaking mountain expeditions. The paper further aims to demonstrate how small educational or institutional teams can develop effective VR-based solutions with limited resources. Project and methods: The study is based on a dual approach: a literature review of existing VR systems used for safety education in tourism and traffic contexts, and analysis of a practical case of two original VR applications created by the author. These applications - SafeDrive and Rescuer - were developed using the Unity engine and implemented within the Spatial.io metaverse platform. SafeDrive simulates an urban infrastructure environment in the city of Dąbrowa Górnicza to educate citizens on the principles of traffic safety, while Rescuer guides users through the principles of safe mountain tourism using interactive scenarios tailored for different groups, including seniors and emergency responders. The Gartner Hype Cycle model was employed to assess the maturity and future potential of VR technologies in educational applications. Results: The developed applications demonstrated high usability and functionality in diverse educational environments. Testing across various platforms - from VR headsets to mobile browsers - confirmed broad accessibility and effective performance. Immersive interaction with realistic urban and natural environments enabled users to better understand potential threats and develop appropriate behavioural responses. Conclusions: The analysis highlights that VR and metaverse environments offer substantial potential as modern educational tools in the fields of road safety and tourism. The immersive, interactive, and scalable nature of these technologies enables the creation of realistic, safe, and repeatable training conditions that cannot be achieved through traditional educational means. The paper concludes that immersive virtual platforms should become a permanent element of modern strategies for developing social safety awareness and responsible tourism.

Growing organizational safety awareness is propelling the interest in development of novel solutions for fire training. Significant effort in this area has previously gone into designing various immersive virtual reality (VR) systems in hopes of enabling safe exploration and experiencing the consequences of ones actions in scenarios that would be too hazardous in the real life. Yet, the fact that VR generally lacks the sensory feedback of a real life fire situation has been found to impede a sense of realism and validity of such experiences. As part of our efforts to mitigate this issue, we now present a new prototype fire evacuation simulator designed to deliver not just audiovisual feedback, but likewise real-time heat and scent stimulation.

Large public buildings are characterized by high occupancy and complex functions, which can easily lead to issues such as congestion in evacuation routes and disorderly crowd behavior in the event of a fire. Conducting analyses and simulation assessments of evacuation mechanisms in fire scenarios is of great significance for improving building fire safety standards and emergency management capabilities. At present, there are significant gaps in the existing research on evacuation simulation for public buildings: Most studies rely on fixed parameter assumptions and fail to effectively quantify the influence of subjective factors such as psychological factors, safety awareness, and social roles on evacuation behavior. Moreover, the combination of BIM technology and evacuation simulation mostly focuses on the presentation of spatial geometric information, lacking a deep integration with quantitative methods for quantifying the subjective behavior of personnel, resulting in insufficient authenticity and predictive reliability of evacuation simulations, and making it difficult to precisely support fire protection design and emergency decision-making. In response to this research gap, this study has established an integrated framework that quantifies subjective human-related factors, maps them to key behavioral parameters through fuzzy inference, and couples them with BIM-based fire and evacuation simulations to provide a verifiable linkage between fire scene constraints, human behavior, and evacuation outcomes. This paper employs fuzzy logic theory together with Pyrosim and Pathfinder to investigate the effects of human-related subjective factors and fire scene conditions on fire evacuation safety. A questionnaire survey was conducted to examine how psychological factors, safety awareness, and social roles of pedestrians influence evacuation behavior. Through the reliability and validity test of the valid questionnaire data and the spearman correlation analysis, it is found that there is a significant positive correlation between safety awareness, psychological factors, social roles and the evacuation behavior. Based on fuzzy rules, the domains and membership functions of the linguistic variables representing these factors are defined, enabling the quantification of the influencing factors and the calculation of the initial evacuation speed. Finally, a BIM model was established and applied to the evacuation simulation of a large shopping mall project in Southwest China to verify the feasibility of the fuzzy algorithm and the safety of the evacuation design. This research innovatively combines fuzzy algorithms with BIM technology, making up for the deficiencies of existing studies in the quantification of subjective factors of personnel and the deep integration of BIM technology. It provides a more scientific calculation plan and data for the study of public building evacuation, and offers reference basis for fire protection design, personnel allocation, emergency plan formulation, and rescue operations.

PurposeUnderstanding the egress considerations of fire evacuation strategies is fundamental to establishing the most effective methods for evacuation of people with and without vulnerabilities in high-rise residential buildings (HRRB). The purpose of this study is to identify the main considerations to enable the assessment and improvement of operational procedures and processes from a building safety manager (BSM) and occupant perspective.Design/methodology/approachPrimary data was collected through group interviews and questionnaires with occupants and BSM of HRRB to achieve the aforementioned aim. Exploratory data from interviews from both groups was used to devise practical and effective operational strategies. The qualitative data was analysed using a systematic coding process with the use of QSR NVivo. Questionnaire data was collected via Qualtrics and was analysed using SPSS.FindingsAnalysis reveals a substantial gap in evacuation strategy awareness between stakeholders, with occupants remaining significantly unaware of the current evacuation protocols in their buildings, exacerbated by reluctance among private companies to invest in evacuation alert systems without mandatory legislation.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the disaster preparedness and response in urban settings literature, expanding the understanding of how HRRB evacuation strategies can be optimised for inclusivity and effectiveness. Practically, the findings of this research have the potential to influence policy decisions and building management practices that directly affect the safety and well-being of HRRB occupants. Overall, this study provides actionable insights for policymakers, building managers and emergency responders to enhance the preparedness and responsiveness of evacuation procedures in high-rise environments while considering the specific needs of vulnerable populations.

Indoor evacuation efficiency heavily relies on the connectivity status of navigation networks. During disastrous situations, the spreading of hazards (e.g., fires, plumes) significantly influences indoor navigation networks’ status. Nevertheless, current research concentrates on utilizing classical statistical methods to analyze this status and lacks the flexibility to evaluate the increasingly disastrous scope’s influence. We propose an evaluation method combining 3D spatial geometric distance and topology for emergency evacuations to address this issue. Within this method, we offer a set of indices to describe the nodes’ status and the entire network under emergencies. These indices can help emergency responders quickly identify vulnerable nodes and areas in the network, facilitating the generation of evacuation plans and improving evacuation efficiency. We apply this method to analyze the fire evacuation efficiency and resilience of two experiment buildings’ indoor networks. Experimental results show a strong influence on the network’s spatial connectivity on the evacuation efficiency under disaster situations.

This study investigated the effects of behavioral training on the acquisition, maintenance, and transfer of fire evacuation skills with mentally retarded adult subjects. Four subjects residing in a moderately supervised community living setting were taught to evacuate their apartments in the event of fire emergencies. A multiple baseline design across subjects was used to evaluate the impact of training on subjects' performance. Training components included instructions, modeling, behavioral rehearsal, feedback, and reinforcement. To facilitate maintenance of responding, all subjects received behavioral programming. Additional training was provided to facilitate responding during actual nighttime fire drills. To enhance the likelihood of generalization, all subjects were trained in their own apartments with actual and simulated fire cues. Assessment was carried out during daytime and nighttime hours. Day and night assessment of responding after treatment termination was also conducted. The results indicated a high level of mastery by all subjects across acquisition and response maintenance training, although only moderate levels of responding were noted during the nighttime period. Implications for future research efforts in the area of emergency responding in community settings are discussed.

Basic objective of this study was to assess the degree to which the high rise buildings situated in Lahore are in compliance with the fire safety standards and SOPs regarding evacuation plans. Quantitative approach was adopted to meet the objective of the study. Ten high rise buildings situated in Lahore city were taken as sample. The buildings were selected on the basis of their size, height, and area. The selected buildings included new and old buildings, commercial and residential buildings so that the variations regarding fire safety standards could be measured. A comprehensive survey questionnaire was developed. Results of the study show that besides various critical incidents, no proper measures are taken on scientific grounds to ensure prevention or at least taking rapid response to minimize losses. There exist no fire safety risk assessments, zero ongoing monitoring, no ongoing fire safety training or awareness program, inadequate or dysfunctional fire extinguishing instruments, no building fire safety control, no automatic fire detection and alarm system, no ongoing fire evacuation drills, and the access of fire brigade to the fire sight is inadequate. Recommendations of the study may prove highly productive in constructing safe buildings from safety point of view.

The behaviour and evacuation experiences of WTC 9/11 evacuees with self-designated mobility impairments