Human Factors in Evacuation Simulation, Planning, and Guidance

Evacuation research shows growing interest in human factors and psychology. Before, humans were mostly modelled as homogeneous, without individual emotion, motivation or physical needs. Human factors had mainly been taken into account as physical characteristics or space requirements. In this paper, we give examples of relevant human factors from the literature and our own field research. Human factors include physical, cognitive, motivational and social variables. As yet, there is no validated set of variables most relevant for safe and fast evacuation. Models for classifying human factors from other domains are introduced for use in future research