Past Event

Date: September 25, 2019 3:00pm-4:30pm

 Location: Dunton Tower: Room 2203

 Speaker: Max Kinateder

 Title: Virtual Fire – Real Behavior: Perception and action during fire evacuation

Abstract:

Why do people sometimes not evacuate when necessary? How is behavior guided by the social and architectural environment in emergencies? Fire evacuation comes with unique challenges to building occupants; from the decision to evacuate to finding safe egress routes under time pressure. I will present studies on perception and action in simulated evacuation scenarios and present results from field and virtual reality lab studies in which we tested evacuation decision-making, way-finding, as well as influence of individual and multiple bystanders.  I will visit methodological challenges in the field of empirical evacuation research and discuss measures improving the outcome of fire evacuation.

Speaker’s profile:

 Max Kinateder is a Research Officer at the National Research Council and works on human behavior in emergency situations (e.g., fire evacuation). The aim of his work is to contribute to a better understanding of perception and action in emergency situations and on how we can create safer environments through design and training measures. For most of his studies, he uses immersive virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) to simulate emergency scenarios. Before joining NRC, he was a postdoc at Dartmouth College, Brown University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Würzburg, Germany