Using sound patterns to enhance directional sound for emergency route guidance

Abstract

Broadband sound emitted by digital sounder devices has been shown be a useful means for guiding building occupants to the correct emergency, particularly under conditions of darkness and obscuration from smoke. Standard practice has been to place a single sounder by the emergency exit door to function as an "auditory exit sign." The current paper reports on studies conducted in full scale building environments that investigated ways in which multiple sounders could be used along a route in a building to provide emergency route guidance to building occupants. The relative effectiveness of various patterns of sounder activation patterns is described. One such pattern that uses sequential activation of sounders together with number of sound pulses to encode sounder position along the evacuation route is particularly promising. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.