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Modelling Decision-Making in Fire Evacuation based on Random Utility Theory

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Ruggiero Lovreglio at Massey University
Ruggiero Lovreglio
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Recent fire accidents and terrorist events have highlighted that further work can be done to improve the safety of buildings during fire evacuations. To date, several evacuation models and tools have been developed to predict the safety of a building by comparing the time necessary to evacuate it and the time at which the conditions of the given environment become unacceptable. However, despite the increasing availability of new models and tools, many “crude” assumptions are still made to represent human behaviour in fire. Another limitation acknowledged by several authors regards the modelling of evacuees’ decision-making. In fact, many crucial decisions affecting the evacuation time – such as the decision to start investigating and evacuating, the route choice, etc. – are often inputs rather than outputs of evacuation models. This work is an attempt to fill the gaps in the existing evacuation models by investigating the use of Random Utility Theory to develop new evacuees’ decision-making models. Random Utility Theory has been developed over the last century to model discrete choices combining a utility based structure and the paradigm of rational decision-makers. This theory has been used in many different fields– economics, transportation, marketing, etc. – to investigate and predict several discrete choices. This work aims at investigating if this theory can be used to model human behaviour in fire, comparing the assumptions underpinning the theory and the existing knowledge on evacuees’ decision-making. Then, a general data-based methodology is introduced in this work to use Random Utility Theory to estimate new evacuees’ decision-making models. This methodology combines existing understanding on how evacuees make decisions and existing or new behavioural data. This work analyses all the different combinations of techniques and research methods (i.e. research strategies) that can be used to collect behavioural data aimed at calibrating evacuees’ decision-making. This analysis identifies the pros and cons of each type of behavioural data in terms of several criteria, such as internal, external and ecological validity, experimental control, ethical issues, etc. The general methodology introduced in this work is finally used to investigate three evacuees’ decisions: (1) the decision to start investigating and evacuating; (2) exit choice; (3) local movement choices. The first decision is investigated using observations (Revealed Preferences) of evacuees participating in unannounced evacuation drills in a cinema theatre. This dataset includes five unannounced evacuation trials carried out in a cinema theatre in Sweden involving 571 participants. The second decision is studied using an online questionnaire and hypothetical scenario experiments (Stated Preferences). This dataset includes Stated Preferences from 1,503 respondents from all over the world for 12 hypothetical evacuation scenarios illustrating a metro station with two available exits. The survey administered the hypothetical evacuation scenarios using pre-recorded videos and was distributed using the Internet (i.e. non-immersive Virtual Reality). The third decision is investigated using observations (Revealed Preferences) of participants in an immersive Virtual Reality experiment. The dataset includes the trajectories of 96 participants, who were asked to evacuate from a road tunnel interacting with the physical virtual environment using a joypad. The methodology introduced in this work represents a useful tool to identify all the factors affecting evacuees’ decision-making and the impact of each factor on the choices. The application of this methodology for the three selected choices has made it possible to identify the pros and cons of the adopted research strategies. Moreover, this work highlights the need for more advanced research strategies to develop future decision-making models.
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... Evacuee data can alternatively be collected by laboratory experiments [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. Laboratory data can, for example, be collected by presenting participants with a hypothetical scenario and asking what they would do (i.e., their behavioural intention) in that particular scenario [20]. These data are often captured via survey designs. ...
... These data are often captured via survey designs. While surveys give the researcher a high level of control over the factors under investigation, they have lower ecological validity given that subjects are aware that they are part of an experiment [20][21][22]. The use of emerging technologies, like virtual or augmented reality, to study human behaviour during building fires has increased [23][24][25][26][27]. ...
... Immersive experiments cannot reach the sample size of online studies and this has an impact on the possibility of investigating factors that have a small effect size [81]. On the other hand, immersive experiments provide higher ecological validity, which is fundamental to having accurate predictions [20,23]. In addition, the participants of this study were all living in New Zealand. ...
Exit Choice in Built Environment Evacuation combining Immersive Virtual Reality and Discrete Choice Modelling
Article
Full-text available
  • Jun 2022
  • AUTOMAT CONSTR
In the event of a fire emergency in the built environment, occupants face a range of evacuation decisions, including the choice of exits. An important question from the standpoint of evacuation safety is how evacuees make these choices and what factors affect their choices. Understanding how humans weigh these (often) competing factors is essential knowledge for evacuation planning and safe design. Here, we use immersive Virtual Reality (VR) experiments to investigate, in controlled settings, how these trade-offs are made using empirical data and econometric choice models. In each VR scenario, participants are confronted with trade-offs between choosing exits that are familiar to them, exits that are less occupied, exits that are nearer to them and exits to which visibility is less affected by fire smoke. The marginal role of these competing factors on their decisions is quantified in a discrete choice model. Post-experiment questionnaires also determine factors such as their perceived realism and emotion evoked by the VR evacuation experience. Results indicate that none of the investigated factors dominated the others in terms of their influence on exit choices. The participants exhibited patterns of multi-attribute conjoint decision-making, consistent with the recent findings in the literature. While lack of familiarity and the presence of smoke both negatively affected the desirability of an exit to evacuees, neither solely determined exit choice. It was also observed that prioritisation of the said factors by participants changed during the repeated scenarios when compared to the first scenario that they experienced. Results have implications for both fire safety designs and future VR evacuation experiment designs. These empirical models can also be employed as input in computer simulations of building evacuation.
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... On the practical level, utility theory is used to gauge the consumers' demands of a product or service (Fishburn, 1968). This theory is used by Lovreglio (2016) who stated that an individual will purchase a product that can maximize their gain, where a positive utility counts as a satisfaction, and a negative utility counts as a loss from the result of consuming said product or service. Satisfaction is measured by the preferences or choices of an individual towards his willingness to pay. ...
... The purchase of a green apartment made by both consumers and investors shows WTP for green attributes, indoor air quality, land attributes, and environmental awareness as it benefits them. These benefits are viewed as a positive utility (Lovreglio, 2016) that leads to the increase of willingness to pay. The presence of green attributes is considered essential because it provides a tangible benefit for the residents, which is in line with the research of Iman et al. (2012), such as motion sensor and sound insulation, to reduce electricity bill, maintain the performance of electronic appliances, and avoid the risk of short electrical current (Putra, 2020). ...
Willingness to Pay for Green Apartments in Surabaya, Indonesia
Article
Full-text available
  • Mar 2022
The lack of green building and the public's awareness of the environment is an issue in marketing green apartments in Surabaya, Indonesia. Limited knowledge on green buildings contributes to individuals avoiding risks of purchasing or investing in green apartments. Hence, this study aims to test the effects of green attributes, indoor air quality, accessibility, land attributes, and environmental awareness toward willingness to pay (WTP) for green apartments in Surabaya. This study gathers primary data through the distribution of questionnaires to 390 respondents on green apartments in Surabaya. The data analysis technique used is PLS-SEM. The results showed that green attributes, indoor air quality, land attributes, and environmental awareness significantly influences WTP. Seventy-nine percent of the respondents are willing to pay to own a green apartment for 15% more of the total purchase price, or $670-$6,700. In line with the finding, governments, educational institutions , and property-sector stakeholders need to work together to develop net zero buildings as well as raising green building literacy in the general public to get them to care more for the environment. In a tropical and developing country, the development of green apartments should be adjusted to provide positive benefits to the environment and other sustainable developments.
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... Despite potential evacuee familiarity with a building's layout, presuming exhaustive knowledge of factors influencing exit choice is unrealistic [18]. In reality, individuals often grapple with integrating information across multiple attributes to make strategic decisions accurately. ...
Modelling Context Effects in Exit Choice for Building Evacuations
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2024
Understanding exit choice behaviour is essential for optimising safety management strategies in building evacuations. Previous research focused on contextual attributes, such as spatial information, influencing exit choice, often using utility models based on monotonic functions of attributes. However, during emergencies, evacuees typically make rapid, less calculated decisions. The choice of context can significantly impact the evaluation of attributes, leading to preference reversals within the same choice set but under varying context conditions. This cognitive psychological phenomenon, known as context effects, encompasses the compromise effect, the similarity effect, and the attraction effect. While researchers have long recognised the pivotal role of context effects in human decision making, their incorporation into computer-aided evacuation management remains limited. To address this gap, we introduce context effects (CE) in a social force (SF) model, CE-SF. Evaluating CE-SF’s performance against the UF-SF model, which considers only the utility function (UF), we find that CE-SF better replicates exit choice behaviour across urgency levels, highlighting its potential to enhance evacuation strategies. Notably, our study identifies three distinct context effects during evacuations, emphasising their importance in advancing safety measures.
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... Compared to the experiment, the number of evacuees choosing Exit A each time was relatively less than that in the simulations using both [34] stated that the evacuees' walking velocity was not confined by the small people density, and 2 m/s can be reached in an emergency, actually, a lot of obstacles in the classroom may slow down people. Second, in their experiments [34], one participant chose an unreasonable way, and consequently, he/ she took a long time to escape from Exit A. When there are two exits during evacuations, once evacuees start to move, they need to make global and local decisions, i.e., corresponding to the exit choice and the route choice [35]. The global choice (exit choice) would not be involved in the movement in the one-exit classroom, while both exit choice and route choice are involved in each movement in the two-exit choice. ...
Integrating Cumulative Prospect Theory into a Cellular Automata Model for Building Evacuation with Obstacles
Chapter
  • Feb 2024
A reliable evacuation model plays an important role in building design, emergency systems, and safety management. The cellular automata (CA) model, widely applied in simulating evacuations, determines evacuees’ movement by probabilities in discrete space and time, and provides evacuees with rational moving decisions. However, people are not always rational. To fill this gap, in this study, cumulative prospect theory (CPT), a realistic decision-making model to describe the subjective outcomes and probabilities, was integrated into the CA model (i.e., CPT-CA) to mimic actual human decision-making behavior during evacuation in a room with obstacles. Two types of evacuation scenarios were used to validate our proposed model: one exit and two exits in the classrooms. The results showed that when the classroom with only one exit, the CPT-CA model can provide a relatively close, realistic evacuation time for building evacuation, while the advantages of this model are diminished when there are two exits. Our proposed CPT-CA model can help architects and engineers to adopt this building evacuation model for their building designs.
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... of the decision-making capabilities of the simulated agents, most of the simulated evacuees' decisions are often an input of the model instead of an output of the model (see, for instance, the decision to start evacuating) [10,11]. This represents a limitation for several reasons: it might give users the temptation to manage the scenario in order to reduce the overall evacuation time, and the simulated scenario might not capture all the dynamics that might reasonably be expected [11]. ...
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... A conceptual model described by [23] as "a model that provides a formal description of the physical and social aspects of the real world for purposes of representing the critical parts of a system (under investigation) and the interaction between these parts. In the field of human behaviour in evacuation, has extended this definition, stating that a conceptual, behavioural model is a composite of existing theories and data that has been drawn together to represent some portion of evacuee behaviour" [23][24][25]. ...
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... Based on the nonlinear Prelec function [35], we proposed an empirical weighting function to describe the risk attitude under uncertain smoke conditions. This function, which indicates the relationship between the degree of rationality and quantitative uncertainty risk, provides evidence for the statement that the final decision and proportion of rational analysis and intuitive experience rely on the uncertainty level of the choice context [59]. ...
Individual-level exit choice behaviour under uncertain risk
Article
  • Jun 2022
  • PHYSICA A
Understanding human decision making during emergency evacuations is important. It is because decision making is crucial at each stage of the evacuation (e.g. route choice, exit choice, path finding, etc.). Previous studies have examined the influence of social interaction and environmental factors on exit choice. However, researches on the decision-making behaviour and risk attitude towards such selection at the individual level is still limited. To fill this knowledge gap, we designed a series of virtual evacuation scenarios to examine the exit choice behaviour and decision-making attitude in uncertainty risk scenarios in different smoke conditions. Data collection was implemented by an online stated preference survey. The results revealed a systematic and pattern preference in exit choice regardless of the decisions made by experienced evacuees. The weighted uncertainty risk for individuals was determined by considering the smoke height and smoke appearance frequency. The weighting function between the subjective and objective entities exhibited an S shape. In addition, the function was estimated using an empirical equation. A decision maker’s attitude towards uncertain risk in evacuation scenarios was observed to be a rank- and reference-dependent preference rather than being fully rational. The results of the experiments conducted in virtual environment well agreed with the cumulative prospect theory. This research demonstrates the feasibility of using virtual environment for evacuation experiment which can total avoid the risk of stampede while the individual decision-making behaviours can still be captured.
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... Special focus has also been placed on assessing the evacuation behavior of indigenous populations and First Nations, indicating the need for place-based and people-specific policies strategies that address community needs (see for example, McGee et al. 2019;Christianson et al. 2019;Asfaw et al. 2020). It should also be noted that a substantial amount of literature also covers pedestrian evacuation from fires in buildings (Kuligowski and Peacock 2005;Ronchi and Nilsson 2013;Kuligowski 2013;Ronchi et al. 2014) with some examples using discrete choice analysis (Lovreglio et al. 2014;Lovreglio 2016). While this research topic is not directly related to our work on wildfire evacuations, we note it here as a potential source of inspiration for future work, especially if vehicular evacuations are rendered ineffective due to heavy congestion. ...
Understanding California wildfire evacuee behavior and joint choice making
Article
Full-text available
  • Apr 2022
  • TRANSPORTATION
For evacuations, people must make the critical decision to evacuate or stay followed by a multi-dimensional choice composed of concurrent decisions of their departure time, transportation mode, route, destination, and shelter type. These choices have important impacts on transportation response and evacuation outcomes. While extensive research has been conducted on hurricane evacuation behavior, little is known about wildfire evacuation behavior. To address this critical research gap, particularly related to joint choice-making in wildfires, we surveyed individuals impacted by the 2017 December Southern California Wildfires (n = 226) and the 2018 Carr Wildfire (n = 284). Using these data, we contribute to the literature in two key ways. First, we develop two latent class choice models (LCCMs) to evaluate the factors that influence the decision to evacuate or stay/defend. We find an evacuation keen class and an evacuation reluctant class that are influenced differently by mandatory evacuation orders. This nuance is further supported by different membership of people to the classes based on demographics and risk perceptions. Second, we develop two portfolio choice models (PCMs), which jointly model choice dimensions to assess multi-dimensional evacuation choice. We find several similarities between wildfires including a joint preference for within-county and nighttime evacuations and a joint dislike for within-county and highway evacuations. Altogether, this paper provides evidence of heterogeneity in response to mandatory evacuation orders for wildfires, distinct membership of populations to different classes of people for evacuating or staying/defending, and clear correlation among key wildfire evacuation choices that necessitates joint modeling to holistically understanding wildfire evacuation behavior.
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A quantitative comparison of virtual and physical experimental paradigms for the investigation of pedestrian responses in hostile emergencies
Article
Full-text available
  • Mar 2024
Modern experiments investigating human behaviour in emergencies are often implemented in virtual reality (VR), due to the increased experimental control and improved ethical viability over physical reality (PR). However, there remain questions regarding the validity of the results obtained from these environments, and no full validation of VR experiments has yet appeared. This study compares the results of two sets of experiments (in VR and PR paradigms) investigating behavioural responses to knife-based hostile aggressors. This study quantitatively analyses these results to ascertain whether the different paradigms generate different responses, thereby assessing the use of virtual reality as a data generating paradigm for emergencies. The results show that participants reported almost identical psychological responses. This study goes on to identify minimal differences in movement responses across a range of predictors, noting a difference in responses between genders. As a result, this study concludes that VR can produce similarly valid data as physical experiments when investigating human behaviour in hostile emergencies, and that it is therefore possible to conduct realistic experimentation through VR environments while retaining confidence in the resulting data. This has major implications for the future of this type of research, and furthermore suggests that VR experimentation should be performed for both existing and new critical infrastructure to understand human responses in hostile scenarios.
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The Prediction of Exit Choice using Cumulative Prospect Value
Article
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Managing Complexity: Insights, Concepts, Applications
Book
  • Jan 2008
Each chapter in Managing Complexity focuses on analyzing real-world complex systems and transferring knowledge from the complex-systems sciences to applications in business, industry and society. The interdisciplinary contributions range from markets and production through logistics, traffic control, and critical infrastructures, up to network design, information systems, social conflicts and building consensus. They serve to raise readers' awareness concerning the often counter-intuitive behavior of complex systems and to help them integrate insights gained in complexity research into everyday planning, decision making, strategic optimization, and policy. Intended for a broad readership, the contributions have been kept largely non-technical and address a general, scientifically literate audience involved in corporate, academic, and public institutions.
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