Case Studies on Evacuation Behaviour in a Hotel Building in BART and in Real Life

Abstract

BART is the Behavioural Assessment and Research Tool. BART makes use of an interactive, real-time, physics-based virtual environment with realistic 3D visuals and audio. In BART it is possible to face people with the phenomenon lire in a safe way, without being exposed to the extreme health risk of a real fire. The primary objective of the tool in virtual reality (VR) is to generate the information that fire safety engineers have need of for the design of a safe building that complies with actual human behaviour in fires. For the development of the innovative tool first a trial version of BART is developed, which consists of the visualisation of an existing Dutch hotel building. In this paper some case studies on evacuation behaviour in a real hotel building, as well as in a virtual hotel building in BARTtrial, are described. Furthermore some key findings of the earliest trials of behavioural assessment in VR are given.