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 A NEW research project to explore whether culture and ethnicity influence the way in which building occupants behave in emergencies has been announced.
An international multi-disciplinary team has won a grant of 2 million Euros from the European Union to carry out the Behaviour, Security and Culture project. The team includes Professor Ed Galea from the Fire Safety Engineering Group of the University of Greenwich, and a group of engineers, computer modellers and psychologists.
The project will compare how people in seven countries behave when evacuating in emergencies. Evacuation trials will be conducted in each country – Germany, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Poland, the UK and the Czech Republic – using people of similar age and occupation, and the same type of building.
The findings will be used to develop reliable computer models of the way in which individuals and crowds behave in a crisis, with the results also feeding into building design practices and emergency procedures.
Commenting on the project, Professor Galea said: ‘Our findings will give us confidence to predict how people will behave in emergencies, knowing that our computer models are based on how real people behave. This is important as all parts of the world are vulnerable to emergency incidents’.
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