Investigating Pedestrians’ Exit Choice with Incident Location Awareness in an Emergency in a Multi-Level Shopping Complex

Abstract

Limited studies have investigated pedestrians’ exit choices in an emergency in multi-level commercial buildings. In particular, the comparison between exit choices before and after awareness of an incident location is non-existent in the literature. Likewise, the influence of individual attributes, such as the presence of a child or a companion, on the individual’s exit choice in complex architectural layouts has rarely been studied in the literature. This paper aims to address these knowledge gaps by investigating pedestrians’ exit choice behavior in an emergency at a multi-level shopping complex considering exit choice behavior before and after awareness of incident location and the influence of personal attributes (e.g., presence of a child or companion). A survey of 1271 pedestrians for two hypothetical emergency scenarios in a multi-level shopping center in Tehran, Iran was conducted. A tablet-based simulator of a multi-story commercial complex was designed, and on-site interviews were conducted. In the first scenario, participants were asked to select their preferred exit door at the start of the emergency alarm without being informed about the incident location. In the next scenario, the scene of an incident (fire) was displayed without altering the conditions, and pedestrians were asked to choose their desired exit. The utility models investigated the differences in pedestrians’ behavior before and after awareness of the fire location. The models show differences in pedestrian decisions to evacuate and select the exit when the fire location information was available compared to when only emergency alarm information was available. Further, differences in evacuation strategy between the people who preferred to delay the exit and those who preferred to exit immediately were observed. Participants with children were more concerned about the ease of moving on the route and preferred a less congested route and exit area. Differences in evacuation behavior on the ground floor and other floors were also observed.