Do different people act differently in an evacuation emergency? That’s what PhD student and psychologist Erica Kinkel aimed to find out in her field test.
The morning starts with coffee and a personality questionnaire. How stressed do you feel, do you talk about your stress, would you isolate yourself or seek distraction? Next is a memory test in which the test taker should recall sequences of three, four, five or even more digits. That is a way to gauge the working memory, Erica Kinkel explains. She is a PhD student with the section transport & planning in the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences.
Kinkel has just finished her fieldwork in the evacuation laboratory of the company Famostar in Velp, near Arnhem. A little over 160 test subjects filled in the questionnaires and participated in the evacuation test afterwards. The research question is: do different people behave differently in an emergency and can you predict that once you know their personality profile?
The evacuation starts in the ‘Belevingsruimte’ or experience room. Participants take a place behind a laptop for a puzzle task. Lights are dimmed, a siren wails, and people are concentrating behind their laptop. After a while, a message pops up on the screen, requesting one to leave the room through an unknown door. Behind it, there is darkness and a small labyrinth.
Infrared cameras in the labyrinth film the subject who is trying to get out of the maze. What strategy does he/she follow? Do people cooperate, compete or go on their own?
Kinkel explains she has tonnes of data to analyse before she can draw any conclusions. If she does find a correlation between character traits and evacuation behaviour, that might give clues as to how to improve the marking of emergency exits. Tests so far have shown that people miss about half of the emergency exits signs.
Kinkel plans to defend her PhD-thesis in May 2017.
Do you have a question or comment about this article?
delta@tudelft.nl
Comments are closed.