The collection and analysis of pre-evacuation times derived from evacuation trials and their application to evacuation modelling

This paper presents data relating to occupant pre-evacuation times from university and hospital outpatient facilities. Although the two occupancies are entirely different, they do employ relatively similar procedures: members of staff sweep areas to encourage individuals to evacuate.However the manner in which the dependent population reacts to these procedures is quite different. In the hospital case, the patients only evacuated once a member of the nursing staff had instructed them to do so, while in the university evacuation, the students were less dependent upon the actions of the staff, with over 50% of them evacuating with no prior prompting. In addition, the student pre-evacuation time was found to be dependent on their level of engagement in various activities.