Group processes in emergency evacuations

Dr Anne Templeton and Dr Yunhe Tong discuss recent research into the importance of group processes in emergency evacuations.

When considering how people will react in evacuations, planners presume which information people will attend to, whose instructions they will follow, which evacuation routes they will take, and how long they will spend before initiating evacuation. To understand these reactions, much research has focused on important issues affecting evacuation behaviour such as how clear the evacuation guidance is, how much knowledge the evacuees have about the environment, and how relevant evacuees believe a threat is to them personally.

Although these issues are important, they focus on individual-level reasons for behaviour. The issue with this is that evacuations typically require more than one person to evacuate. Whether it is colleagues in an office building, a family evacuating their home, or a mass evacuation from a sports stadium: others are often present. Understanding the collective dynamics of evacuations such as how people influence each other can help to understand how and why people behave during emergency evacuations.

As part of the Fire Protection Association's continuing commitment to increase fire safety awareness across the built environment, a number of informative feature articles are available to read on our website. You can read the full article here.