Evaluating Dynamic Signage for Emergency Evacuation using an Immersive Video Environment

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.

There are numerous reasons to evacuate a building in case of emergency; generally evacuation runs in case of constraints as fire, earthquake, indoor air pollution incidents, terrorist attacks and so on. There was a fire tragedy reported on January 28, 2013 in a night club in Brazil that many victims confused the exit sign with that for the toilet sign, where 50 bodies were found dead in toilet. It is reported that the victims lost their sense of direction due to the smoke [1]. Consequently the traditional static emergency signs are no longer effective especially in a complex building. They are not intelligent to decide how many people are using different exit, where the fire is and how much it may spread or how the evacuee will decide and think while they are in panic. They are several attempts to simulate the evacuation area and create a better model to dynamically lead the evacuee to exit. However creating such system is difficult because the prediction of behaviors in emergency incidents, modeling and examination in the real scenario are the biggest problems. Evacuation exercise are expensive and time consuming, as a result Virtual Environment (VEs) might be the feasible solution to create the emergency scenario and to study the physical, cognitive, and perceptual capabilities of the evacuees, letting them to experience and feel the emergency incident that are impossible to apply in the real world. This project presents the use of VE, called Immersive Video Environment (IVE) [2] to investigate and evaluate the possible dynamic signage inside a building to guide the evacuees to safety and exit. IVE system contains three screens with 140 degree from each other using 3 back projected wall at the same time. In this study dynamic signs inform the evacuee by following the exit signs cause of fire emergency and move towards the exit. Generally the user of VE is disoriented or discomforted due to navigation (Travel) part. As a result, following factors are evaluated by using some pre-defined questionnaire such as Simulator Sickness Questionnaire and NASA TLX: 1. The pre-movement time or response time to the dynamic signs. 2. Panic behavior or Decision making 3. Comfort of the system due to navigation part. 4. Performance of IVE 5. Realism of the simulation 8 scenarios have been managed for this experiment in which each of them last around 30 to 40 seconds for a trip from start point to the exit door. In the entire scenario, the exit signs will be varied. The test participants were 10 people (5 Female, 5 Male) who come from different countries not specially Germany. There were great considerable results of decision making in this study for example, there were several errors for the fire sign during the experiment besides the response time for the fire sign were highly more than the other designs. From the evaluator recognition, it is said that their response has been influenced by the exit door or the design of sign. Generally the performance and the comfort of the system show interesting results in the emergency simulation and footage video for VE. There were a significant different in term of discomfort between men and women and the results of their response time had significant difference. By users rating, the realism of the simulation has been confirmed. For response time experiment, some errors and significant variation were observed during the individual test. The IVE can be used for future experiment investigation such as way finding. The proposed system shall help to yield more reliable information about human behavior and decision making in emergency egress and creating a model. Locations, timing, duration and speed, helping from dynamic signs can be considered as decision-making process subject to emergency evacuation.