Abstract
Due to differences in cognitive ability and physiological development, the evacuation characteristics of children are different from those of adults. This study proposes a novel method of using wearable sensors to collect data (e.g., electrodermal activity, EDA; heart rate variability, HRV) on children’s physiological responses, and to continuously and quantitatively evaluate the effects of different types of alarm sounds during the evacuation of children. In order to determine the optimum alarm for children, an on-site experiment was conducted in a kindergarten to collect physiological data for responses to different types of alarm sounds during the evacuation of 42 children of different ages. The results showed that: (1) The alarm sounds led to changes in physiological indicators of children aged 3–6 years, and the effects of different types of alarm sounds on EDA and HRV activities were significantly different (p < 0.05). Skin conductance (SC), skin conductance tonic (SCT) and skin conductance level (SCL) can be used as the main indicators for analysing EDA of children in this experiment (p < 0.05), and the indicators of ultralow frequency (ULF) and very low frequency (VLF) for HRV were not affected by the type of alarm sounds (p > 0.05). (2) Unlike adults, kindergarten children were more susceptible to the warning siren. The combined voice and warning alarm had optimal effects in stimulating children to perceive risk. (3) For children aged 3–6 years, gender had a significant impact on children’s reception to evacuation sound signals (p < 0.05): Girls are more sensitive than boys in receiving evacuation sound signals, similar to findings of studies of risk perception of adult males and females. In addition, the higher the age, the greater the sensitivity to evacuation sound signals, which accords with results of previous studies on the evacuation dynamics of children.
Highlights
Researchers have long studied the behaviours of human evacuation, it is still a complex scientific problem to understand the evacuation behaviours of children
The results showed that there were significant differences in heart rate variability (HRV) indicators between the baseline data and the experimental data (p < 0.05), especially in low frequency (LF) and high frequency (HF) (p < 0.05), except for ultralow frequency (ULF) and very low frequency (VLF) (p > 0.05), suggesting that the differences between groups were statistically significant, and the children showed significant changes in HRV indicators when exposed to alarm sounds
Considering that skin conductance phasic (SCP) is a phasic component of electrodermal activity (EDA) that reflects short-term responses to external stimulus and evacuation of children is a dynamic process in emergency situations, SCP may be affected by finger movement
Summary
Researchers have long studied the behaviours of human evacuation, it is still a complex scientific problem to understand the evacuation behaviours of children. Children are vulnerable groups during fires [1]. In China, there are more than 220 million children between the ages of 0 and 14, but research on evacuation of children in emergencies is rare. The cognitive and motor abilities of children are significantly different from those of adults [2]. The problem of child evacuation lies in their inability to fully perceive and respond to risks [3,4,5]. Understanding how children perceive the risks they face is critical to safety research on preschool educational buildings
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