Research in human behavior

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Publisher’s version / Version de l'éditeur:

Fire Journal, 74, 3, pp. 35-41, 1980-05

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Research in human behavior

Pauls, J. L.; Jones, B. K.

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TH1

N21d

no. 909

National Research Council of Canada

cop. 2

Conseil national de recherches du Canada

BLDQ'

RESEARCH IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR

by J. L. Pauls and B. K. Jones

Reprinted from

Fire Journal

Vol. 74, No. 3, May 1980

p. 35-41

DBR Paper No. 909

Division of Building Research

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L'inttrCt et la recherche suscitts par le comportement des personnes dans les cas d'incendie se sont accrus remarquablement au cours de la dernikre dtcennie et, plus particulikrement, depuis la parution du rapport Wood sur le comportement des personnes en cas de feu (The Behavior of People in Fire) en 1972. De plus en plus, on reconnait l'importance des facteurs physiologiques, psychologiques et sociologiques qui dtterminent les rtactions des individus au cours d'un incendie et on s'attache

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mieux les documenter. Bien que l'on ne fasse qu'amorcer les recherches dans ce domaine, nous avons maintenant suf- fisamrnent de preuves pour mettre en doute bon nombre d'hypothhses ex- istantes sur le comportement des personnes en cas d'incendie. Un exarnen at- tentif nous permet de relever les erreurs qui ont eu cours dans la formation du personnel, les exercises d'evacuation et la conception des sorties de secours et des signaux d'alarme, au temps ou l'on se fiait davantage

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la tradition,

a

la sagesse conventionnelle et au "bon sens".

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RESEARCH

I N HUMAN BEHAVIOR

J. L. PAULS and B. K. JONES

The interest and research on human behavior in fires has increased markedly over the past decade, especially since the publication of Wood's report, The Behaviour of People in Fires, in 1972.l More and more, the physiological, psychological, and sociological aspects of how people cope with fire conditions are being documented. Although studies in this area are at a very early stage, there is sufficient evidence to question many previous assumptions about human behavior in fires. Careful examination is disclosing errors in areas such as staff training, drills, exit design, and alarm systems where there has previously been much reliance on tradition, conventional wisdom, and "common sense." For example, research has demonstrated unequivocally that panic or an animalistic response simply does not describe the survival-directed, yet altruistic behavior that people display in emergencies. Behavior in fire can best be understood as a logical attempt to deal with a complex, rapidly changing situation in which minimal information for action is available.

To what extent do we understand human factors in the fire problem? What have we learned that could help us

A revised, updated version of a paper originally prepared for the proceedings of the conference "Cooperating to Fight Fire" sponsored by the Society of the Plastics Industry ofCanada in Ottawa, Canada, on October 30-31, 1979.

The authors are employed in the Division of Building Research, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Canada.

to modlfy the negative aspects of these factors and build upon the positive ones? How much effort has gone into trying to understand human behavior as an especially important part of the fire problem? The answer to these questions is "Very little."

Very little of the total research and development ex- penditure in the fire field has focused on human factors. In a 1975 review entitled "Fire Safety and Related Man-Environment Studies,"* the author estimated that less than one percent of the $100 million spent annually on fire research in the United States goes for research on behavioral factors. (Most of the total goes toward private-sector product development.) As will be seen in the following review, research on human behavior related to fire has recently increased markedly, but at best, it is likely to account for only several percent of the total.

The recent interest and consequent research was spurred in the early 1970s by the publication of Wood's report, The Behaviour of People in Fires, which is based on a survey of 2,193 people in 952 fire incidents in Brit- ain.' About that time, human factors received fresh attention as part of the concern for high-rise firesafety and the systems approaches to firesafety being explored within the US General Services Administration and the NFPA. Dr. John Bryan, head of the University of Mary- land's Fire Protection Curriculum, a pioneer in research on behavior and fire, produced a bibliography in mid- 1978 that provides an indication of the rapid recent

Copyright O 1980 NATIONAL FIRE PROTECTION ASSOCIATION

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growth of research in the field.3 Comparing the late 1960s with the late 1970s, the number of literature references per year has increased tenfold.

To a large extent, the relatively large number of research papers on human behavior in fires in recent years is the result of studies in the United States commis- sioned by the Program for Design Concepts at the Na- tional Bureau of Standards' Center for Fire Research, with major funding by the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Groups undertaking such studies include the Fire Protection Curriculum at the University of Maryland, the Departments of Engineer- ing and Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley, and the Applied Psychology Program at Loyola University of Chicago. Other US contributions include those of the NFPA in Boston and the Disaster Research Center at Ohio State University. In Britain, the Department of Environment's Fire Research Station has funded studies, including work leading to Wood's 1972 report and more recent work by Canter, Breaux, and Sime at the University of Surrey's Department of Psychology. Japanese research on the subject is also be- coming better known, in part through joint meetings organized by the United States-Japan Panel on Fire Re- search and Safety. Canadian contributions come mainly from the National Research Council of Canada's Division of Building Research and from the Emergency Com- munications Research Unit associated with Carleton University's School of Journalism.

No attempt has been made here to provide a complete survey of the available research or literature. Anyone interested in a thorough review of the subject should refer to forthcoming literature resulting from two international seminars on fires and behavior. The first, held in March 1977 at the University of Surrey, initiated work on the first book in the field. Edited by David Canter,

Fires and Human Behaviour is to be published early in 1980.4 It may be considered the first comprehensive review of the field. Proceedings of the second international seminar, held in October 1978 at the US National Bureau of Standards, are now being prepared. A third international seminar, planned for September 1980 at the University of Edinburgh, will take as its starting point the publications of the two previous seminars and will emphasize implications for design, management, education, and standards.

A variety of research approaches have been used to date. Major surveys, in which people involved in a large number of fires were interviewed by fire brigade personnel, have been directed by Wood in Britain1 and Bryan in the United state^.^ Greater depth, which is possible in a case-study approach, has been achieved by a larger group of investigators. 6-'2 A notable example of

a major case study was that initiated after the 1977 Bev- erly Hills Supper Club fire in K e n t ~ c k y . ~ . ~ Such case studies tend to generate vast amounts of data that can be usefully examined and reexamined by other researchers

over many years. For example, 1,117 questionnaires were completed and 630 extensive interviews carried out following the Kentucky fire. Six years after the 1973 fire in the Summerland Recreation Centre on the British Isle of Man, 500 detailed statements made by people immediately after the fire were examined by Sime in a study of exit use.12 Such case studies illustrate the coop- eration of fire and police services, fire investigators, behavioral researchers, and others that has marked much of the work on fires and behavior.

Compared to long-established research in other areas of science, studies of behavior related to fire are at a very early stage, and conclusive answers to questions about behavior in fires cannot be expected. In fact, important questions are yet to be identified. It must also be recog- nized that studies to date have dealt mainly with only a few occupancy conditions such as are found in certain high-rise office buildings, health care facilities, and a few large, public assembly buildings. Even in the most studied of these occupancies - health care facilities -much remains to be done. For example, questions about appropriate forms of staff firesafety training and its value in emergencies have been subjected to very little scrutiny. 8,13,14,15

On matters such as st& training, drills, exit design, and alarm systems, there has been much reliance on

tradition, conventional wisdom, and naive psychology -

approaches that often contain errors. The following sec- tions, which cover aspects ranging from occupant activities affecting fire ignition and growth to human physiology, give examples of areas where nonscientific approaches have been misleading. On a more positive note, there are signs that research may lead to improved firesafety through more rational building design.

Occupant Activities Affecting Fire Ignition, Growth, and Consequences

Except in industrial occupancies, this area has received little attention. One aspect, the psychology of firesetting, is being examined by those particularly concerned with arson.16 A related small study has examined children's fire play and their fire survival skills.17

Careless smoking habits and alcohol consumption greatly influence fire ignition and human survival pos- sibilities. Berl and Halpinls have analyzed contributing factors and physiological consequences in 463 fire deaths, and have identified the importance of toxic gases as the cause of death, cigarettes as one of the principal ignition sources, and alcohol as an important contributing factor. Aside from the statistical prominence, how- ever, these factors have not been a major concern of behavioral studies. Drug use, affecting the ability to re- spond, is also an important factor in fire behavior, especially in homes for the elderly.

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Recent studies of occupant activities and social conditions that influence fire ignition in health care institutions include one by Haber,ll who found that in five out of seven fires investigated, the room of origin was in the extreme corner of the fire floor, far removed from the nurses' station. Haber suggested that because individu- als in such rooms tend to be ignored and neglected, a causal relation between the point of fire origin and certain institutional policies may exist. Ferguson of the Na- tional Research Council of Canada provided the motiva- tion for a study that could result in the establishment of an improved fire incident reporting system in Canadian hospitals. This study is based on the recognition that a knowledge of occupancy is an important factor in a comprehensive approach to firesafety, and that one cannot simply impose a firesafety system on an institution without considering both the goals and the operational aspects of the organization.

Study reports note that people often approach a fire area to attempt control and extinguishment -very often with success, rather than simply leave a building when they learn of a fire. In fact, a nationwide survey in the United States indicates that over 90 percent of fires in homes are extinguished by occupants, not by fire department personnel.l9 Wood's study lists fire fighting as a frequent first action and indicates a greater tendency to fight fire among people familiar with a building, and a smaller tendency when the fire is judged to be serious. l He also found that the more frequently that people re- ceive training or instruction on what to do in fire, the more likely they are to raise the alarm or organize evacuation as a first action.

Early case studies of human behavior in fires revealed the importance of the interaction of human behavior and the fire environment. In a relatively early study, Lerup and others mapped, or graphically modeled, "realms" of fire development (i.e., stages separated by critical events such as flashover) along with "episodes" of human behavior.20 This descriptive approach is still employed by Bryan and DiNenno in their extensive series of case studies of fires in hospitals. (Each fire was reported sepa- rately; a representative one was described in a recent article in FIRE JOURNAL.^)

Canter, Breaux, and Sime also make use of a graphical technique, in this case more abstract "decomposition diagrams," which show the relations of people's acts in fire situations. These were used in the analysis of 4,007 acts reported by 198 people interviewed after 29 fires in buildings. The researchers' explanatory model "pos- tulates that behavior in fires can b e understood as a logical attempt to deal with a complex, rapidly changing situation in which minimal information for action is available. "lo

Although the models and techniques of these researchers may appear to be formidably complex, aspects of the process of behavior and its consequences in a rapidly changing fire situation can be readily communi- cated to the general public. In fact, Canter, Breaux, and Sime have developed a simple game that members of the public can play, using either a large, exhibit-type board with switches and lights or a newspaper-published version seen widely in Britain and mentioned in at least one Canadian newspaper. 21,22

Behavior in Fires is a Complex Process Normal Occupancy as an Indicator of Behavior in an Emergency

Behavior in fires is far more complicated than much conventional thought would suggest. Recent studies re- veal a largely adaptive, often complex, pattern as people carry out first activities such as searching for the fire, fighting the fire, closing doors to the fire area, pulling a fire alarm, notdying others, calling the fire department, and getting dressed. 135910 The whole behavioral process,

including first actions and perhaps many subsequent ones, takes place as the fire itself may be rapidly developing. Thus, what is an appropriate action at one stage may b e quite inappropriate a minute later.

This aspect of behavior in fire was identified at an early stage of research, and its importance is particularly evident in the 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Kentucky. During the fire, people retained the same general roles they had before the fire: st& members took care of patrons at the tables, rooms, and stations to which they were assigned; patrons looked to the st& for g ~ i d a n c e . ~ Based on findings from this fire, Swartz recommended that "firesafety plans for places of public assembly should examine the roles that people normally play and not seek to prescribe emergency actions that

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are contrary to these r01es."~ The same may b e said for occupancies other than public assembly.

Anecdotal accounts and detailed studies support this view of familiar roles and provide evidence of related behavior such as choosing a familiar exit in preference to a closer and perhaps safer, but less familiar one. The design and management implications of the relation between normal occupancy activities and emergency behavior have not yet been considered in detail. For example, codes incorrectly credit exit capacity to stairs regardless of their normal use. An exit that is not normally used may not (be seen to) exist in an emergency, or as Pauls has suggested, an exit that is not a convenient occupancy amenity will carry significantly fewer people in e v a c ~ a t i o n s . ~ ~

Panic

cal attempt to deal with a complex, rapidly changing situation in which minimal information for action is available."1° They go on to suggest that the goal of regulations should be "re-oriented to increase the likelihood of informed decisions being made by people in fires."1° Based on his examination of behavior in the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, Swartz recommended that "firesafety education should consider and be based on people's erroneous conceptions about distance being related to safety, and the time needed to escape from a fire e m e r g e n ~ y . " ~ A related concern led the US National Bureau of Standards' Center for Fire Research to make a film about flashover. This film provides people with use- ful information about the "rapidly changing situation" that they can encounter in a fire.

To what extent do regulations, and firesafety practices generally, lead to the availability of better information for people facing fire? A simple fire alarm system - a key feature of commonly-required firesafety measures _.

_-

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confuses as much as it informs. Even automated public The word panic is used frequently in media accounts

of fire and in firesafety literature to describe a variety of address systems with prerecorded announcements may soon join traditional alarm systems as sources of an- behavior, real and imagined. Here conventional wis-

dom, backed by naive psychology, is wrong. Study after noyance and confusion for building occupants. Long- study, including a great many carried out after large- term performance of fire-emergency communication systems was not studied in the well-publicized, but very scale natural disasters, concludes that panic rarely

1,5,6,10,24,25 _{Based on his examination of inter-} limited 1974 study by Keating and Loftus of the Seattle

Federal Office Building's communication system.26927 view and questionnaire data from the many survivors of

the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, Swartz concluded Further research, also based heavily on a review of the that "fire reports or other accounts of fires should delete available literature, was subsequently done by Glass and the term 'panic' and report factually what happened or R ~ b i n . ~ ~ Research must go beyond these early efforts if what people said."I The Supper Club fire was marked by firesafety systems are to work effectively.

a maximum occurrence of altruistic behavior and not by antisocial, aggressive, nonadaptive behavi0r.I

Evacuation During a fire, people do what seems to them to be the

best thing to do-under the circumstances that they are

aware of. With hindsight, especially that of an observer in possession of more complete information, such actions may appear to be nonadaptive, but this does not justify use of the term panic.

The opinion that panic is a readily-triggered, ever- present threat in fires has long been part of firesafety beliefs and continues to influence standards. codes. design decisions, and management practices. Maintaining this opinion despite much evidence that panic is rare is not only unrealistic, but it is also unfair to people who can generally be counted on to cope remarkably well in fires and other emergencies. The frequently seen firesafety directive, "Do not ~ a n i c , " is meaningless; it does not provide information, which is one of the things that people need most in an emergency.

Communication and Information Needs of People in a Fire

A statement from Canter, Breaux and Sime is worth repeating: "Behavior in fires can be understood as a logi-

Immediate, rapid, well-organized evacuation appears to be the exception, rather than the rule, when people hear a fire alarm. Some reasons for this have been suggested earlier in this article. The erroneous assump- tion that behavior in fire is essentially a simple process largely controlled by alarm and exit systems has led to an emphasis on such physical facilities in building and fire codes.

A r ~ h e a ~ ~ examined the problem of evacuating de- pendent, nonambulatory persons from fires in nursing homes and other health care facilities. H e rejected the "hydraulic model," assuming independent occupant mobility, which is a basis for current life safety regulations. This rejected model, furthermore, places greater emphasis on the capacity of the "safe end" of the evacuation route than it does on problems at the "threat end," where most of the casualties occur in a fire.

Recent research, some of which was critically re- viewed by Stahl and A r ~ h e a , ~ O has identified such over- simplifications in exit-design assumptions, as well as misconceptions regarding long-accepted relations between crowd flow and exit

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The work of Pauls, who observed 40 evacuation drills in Ottawa office buildings during the 1970s, is perhaps best known for exposing errors in the traditional 22-inch (560 mm) unit-exit-width basis for exit rules. 23930-33 In addition to proposing performance-based alternatives to the traditional width rule, Pauls stressed the need to consider operational or management aspects of evacuation, particularly in nontraditional, selective evacuations. 23,31-34 In selective evacuations, the total time taken to ascertain fire conditions, to make evacuation decisions, to communicate selective evacuation directions over communication systems, and to actually relocate people in safer areas of a building can b e significantly longer, even several times longer, than is required for the relatively simple, traditional, total evacuation of the same number of people. 32233 Even in simple, total evacuation drills, evacuation times have been observed to be as much as twice as long as had previously been pre- d i ~ t e d . ~ ~ Given much-improved knowledge of crowd movement, normally and in drills, and improved aware- ness of the complexity of behavior in fires, we should

think of evacuation-time predictions

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even those based

on realistic, conservative flow assumptions - as nzin-

imums and not maximums, as is sometimes argued. Exit design will increasingly become an insensitive, expensive, and meaningless exercise if it continues to be considered largely in quantitative tenns, instead of in terms of qualitative factors that include normal occupancy conditions and actual behavior of people in emergencies. This shift of emphasis to qualitative factors has been indicated by results of behavior studies done so far, studies that need to b e continued and expanded. A

shift in emphasis should also lead to a coordinated approach to implementing related measures for firesafety and security to replace the separate, conflicting, approaches now in use.

Physiological Aspects

Much of the foregoing review has dealt with social and psychological aspects, largely ignoring physiological factors that affect people's perception and movement activities. As an indication of work related to such factors, Pezoldt and Van Cott's recent review of sleep research and related studies of the characteristics of emergency alarm signals should be noted.35 Nowhere did they find an adequate basis for specifying signal characteristics that offer a high assurance of arousal. They also discuss

the problem of physical performance following abrupt arousal from sleep. Physiological and, to a lesser extent, psychological effects of smoke and fire gases have been discussed by P h i l l i p ~ . ~ ~ Berl and Halpin18 covered physiological factors in fire deaths and examined physical, social, and economic factors responsible for the fie- quency of unwanted ignition and the likelihood of a fatal outcome. Behavioral studies by Wood, Bryan, and DiNenno, mentioned earlier, have started to identify factors that affect whether people will move through smoke and what distances they will cover.'a5,' Their studies show that people will often move significant distances through smoke, and survive to tell about it.

People tend to underestimate their ability to move out of tall buildings, given a safe exit route. For example, after the complete evacuation of a 21-story office building in Ottawa, only 64 percent of the occupants surveyed felt that they were capable of descending at least 20 flights of stairs "without stopping, at a normal speed, and without assistance from others."31 Pauls, recalling his findings from observing 40 evacuation drills in tall office buildings (including the finding that crowds descending stairs in total evacuations do so at a relatively slow speed), estimated that only "about 3 percent of those usually present in high-rise office buildings cannot or should not attempt to evacuate by means of crowded exit stairs." The 3 percent includes people with heart disor- ders and convalescents from recent illnesses, surgery, or accidents, as well as those with more lasting dis- a b i l i t i e ~ . ~ ' , ~ ~ In buildings increasingly accessible to disabled persons and in a wide variety of health care and residential buildings, the number of persons requiring special evacuation assistance can be quite large. This is of particular concern in a major program of research organized by the US National Bureau of Standards and the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Re- cent reports prepared under this program include some dealing with behavioral and physical characteristics of the disabled and their building-use activities. 37,38 A conference in November 1979 at the National Bureau of Standards provided an opportunity for discussion of firesafety for the handicapped.

Conclusions

We have described, selectively and briefly, the nature and findings of research into human behavior related to fires. Those who would like a more comprehensive re-

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view should read a forthcoming book, Fires and Human B e h a v i o ~ r , ~ to be ~ublished early in 1980. For the research-oriented, a recent paper by Stahl critically ex- amines research effort to date on the broad topic of behavior related to fire, and suggests directions for hrther research.39

Study in this field has been productive, but the problems are complex. For one thing, the issues are qualitative as well as quantitative. The solutions are not simple, at least as far as implementation is concerned. Research has shown that panic or an animalistic-response model simply does not describe the survival-directed, yet al-

truistic, behavior that people display in emergencies. This aspect of behavior plus others mentioned in this brief review need to be better understood and incorpo- rated in an effective, cooperative effort to improve firesafety in buildings.

It appears that for the first time in the history of fire protection and fire service education and training, a for- mal academic course relative to the human behavior of people in fire situations is being prepared and developed by the Open Learning Fire Service Program for offering at eight institutions ofhigher learning in the fall semester

of 1980. L

REFERENCES P. G. Wood, The Behaviour of People in Fires, Fire Research

Note No. 953, Building Research Establishment, Fire Research Sta- tion, Borehamwood, Herts., England, November 1972.

J. L. Pauls, "Fire Safety and Related Man-Environment Studies," Man-Environment Systems, Vol. 5, No. 6 (November 1975), pp. 386394. (Reprinted as NRCC 16845).

John L. Bryan, Human Behavior in Fire - A Bibliography, NBS-GCR-78-138. National Bureau of Standards, US Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C., August 1978.

David Canter, Fires and Human Behavior. New York and Lon- don: Wiley (forthcoming).

John L. Bryan, Smoke as a Determinant of Human Behavior in

Fire Situations (Project People I). Fire Protection Curriculum, College ofEngineering, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, June 1977.

Richard L. Best, Reconstruction of a Tragedy, The Beverly Hills

Supper Club Fire. Boston: NFPA, January 1978.

Joseph A. Swartz, "Human Behavior in the Beverly Hills Fire,"

FIRE JOURNAL, V01. 73, NO. 3 (May 1979), p. 73.

John L. Bryan and P. J. DiNenno, "Human Behavior in a Hospi- tal Fire," FIRE JOURNAL, Vol. 73, No. 3 (May 1979), p. 82.

J. Scanlon, "Human Behavior in a Fatal Apartment Fire," FIRE

JOURKAL, Vol. 73, No. 3 (May 1979), p. 76.

l o D, Canter, J. Breaux, and 1. Sime, Human Behaviour in Fires. Fire Research unit, Departmentif Psychology, University of Surrey, England, 1978.

l 1 6. M. Haber, Fire as Environment: A Study of Human Interac-

tion, With Fire as Environment, in Health Care Institutions. Program for Design Concepts, Center for Fire Research, National Bureau of Standards, US Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C., 1977.

l 2 J. Sime, 'The Use of Building Exits in a Large-Scale Fire." Pre- sented at the International Conference on Environmental Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, England, July 1 6 2 0 , 1979.

l3 E. Herz, P. Edelman, and L. Bickman, The Impact of Fire

Emergency Training on Knowledge of Appropriate Behavior in Fires,

NBS-GCR-78-137. Center for Fire Research, National Bureau of Standards, US Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C., January 1978.

l4 E . Bickman, E. Herz, P. Edelman, and D. Rivers, An Eualua-

tion of Planning and Training for Fire Safety in Health Care Facilities, Phase Two, NBS-GCR-79-179. National Bureau of Standards, US De- partment of Commerce and US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Washington, D , C., August 1979.

l5 J. Hall, "Patient Evacuation in Hospitals," in Fires and Human

Behaviour (ed. D. Canter). New York, London: Wiley (forthcoming).

l6 R. G. Vreeland and M. B. Waller, The Psychology of Firesetting:

A Review andAppraisa1, NBS-GCR-79-157. Center for Fire Research, National Bureau of Standards, US Department of Commerce, Wash- ington, D.C., January 1979.

l7 D. Kafiy, "Playing With Matches: Children And Fires," in Fires

and Human Behaviour (ed. by D. Canter). New York and London: Wiley (forthcoming).

l 8 W. G. Berl and B. M. Halpin, Human Fatalities From Unwanted

Fires, NBS-GCR-79.168. Center for Fire Research, National Bureau of

Standards, US Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C., April 1979.

l9 The National Fire Data Center, Highlights of the National

Household Fire Survey. National Fire Prevention and Control Admin- istration, US Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C., 1975,

20 L. Lerup, D. Cronrath, and J. Liu, "Mapping Fire: A Technique for Developing Dynamic Aspects of Environment and Behavior," Fire

Research, Vol. 1 (1977178), pp. 87-95.

B. Silcock, "You Are Caught in a Fire .

. .

Then What?' The

Sunday Times, London, England, April 24, 1977.

22"'Playing Seriously With Fire," The Gazette, Montreal, Canada, December 5, 1977.

23 J. L. Pauls, "Building Evacuation: Research Findings and Rec- ommendations," in Fires and Human Behaviour (ed. by D. Canter). New York and London: Wiley (forthcoming).

24 E. L. Quarantelli, "Panic Behaviour: Some Empirical Observa- tions," in Human Response to Tall Buildings (ed. by D. J. Conway). Stroudshurg, Pa; Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, Inc., 1977, pp. 336350.

25 J. Sime, "The Use of the Concept of 'Panic,"' in Fires and

Human Behaviour (ed. by D. Canter). New York and London: Wiley (forthcoming).

26 J. P. Keating and E . F. Loftus, 'The Psychology of Emergency Communications." Presented at the International Conference on Fire Safety in High-Rise Buildings, Seattle, Washington, November 1974, sponsored by General Services Administration, Public Buildings Serv- ice, Washington, D.C.

27 J. PI Keating and E . F. Loftus, "Local Alarm Systems for High- Rise Buildings-A Case Study," Mass Emergencies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (March 1977), pp. 25-34.

28 R. A. Glass and A. I. Rubin, Fire Safety for High-Rise Buildings: The Role of Communications, NBS Building Science Series 115. Center for Building Technology, National Bureau of Standards, US Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C., April 1979.

29 J. Archea, "The Evacuation of Non-Ambulatory Patients From Hospital and Nursing Home Fires: A Framework for a Model," NBSIR 79-1906, Program for Design Concepts, Center for Fire Research, National Bureau of Standards, US Department of Commerce, Wash- ington, D.C., November 1979.

30 F. S tahl and J. Archea, An Assessment of the Technical Literature

on Emergency Egress for Buildings, NBSIR 77-1313, Center for Build- ing Technology, National Bureau of Standards, US Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C., October 1977.

31 J. L. Pauls, "Building Evacuation and Other Fire-Safety Meas-

ures: Some Research Results and Their Application to Building De- sign, Operation and Regulation." In EDRA 5, Man-Environment In-

teractions: Evaluation and Applications. The State of the Art in Environmental Design Research - 1974, Part 4, 1974, pp. 147-168. (Reprinted as NRCC 14708.)

32 J. L. Pauls, "Movement of People in Building Evacuations," in Human Response to Tall Buildings (ed, by D. J. Conway). Stroudsburg, Pa.: Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, Inc., 1977, pp. 281-292. (Reprinted as NRCC 16253.)

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in Emergencies," in Proceedings of the Second Conference on Design- ing to Survive Severe Hazards, IIT Research Institute, Chicago, Ill., Nov. 1-3, 1977, pp. 103-130. (Reprinted as NRCC 16845.)

34 J. L. Pauls and B. K. Jones, "Building Evacuation: Research Methods and Case Studies," in Fires and Human Behavior (ed. by D. Canter). New York and London: Wiley (forthcoming).

35 V. J. Pezoldt and H. P. Van Cott, Arousal From Sleep by Emergency Alanns: Implications From the Scientijic Literature, NBSIR 78-1484. Consumer Sciences Division, Center for Consumer Product Technology, National Bureau of Standards, US Department of Com- merce, Washington, D.C., (HEW), June 1978.

36 Anne W. Phillips, "The Effects of Smoke on Human Behavior: A

Review of the Literature." FIRE JOURNAL, Vo1. 72, No. 3 (May 1978), p. 69.

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