When developing a research roadmap for human behaviour in fires, it is necessary to identify areas that require additional research. A general overview – from a multidisciplinary perspective – of gaps in human behaviour in fires research across multiple contexts is missing. The goal of this paper was to perform a scoping review to identify research gaps and themes in all aspects of human behaviour in fires across contexts. This scoping review included 17 articles. In total, 37 research gaps and 11 research themes for the built environment and community context were identified. The main research gaps are related to cognitive factors, behavioural responses, environmental factors and physical/physiological factors. Also, for all research themes, additional research involving heterogenous populations is required. Furthermore, there is an imbalance in human behaviour in fires studies: most articles were focused on the built environment rather than the community context. Finally, the topic of intoxication has received limited research attention, and data collection methods lack diversity. Future research should not only be done from a multidisciplinary perspective but also interdisciplinary research efforts are required. The availability of more data and knowledge on human behaviour and responses in fires could be beneficial to simulation model developers/users, the general public and fire safety managers.

The goals of this chapter are to provide: (1) an overview of the various human factors in pedestrian planning research, and (2) an understanding of how these human factors affect pedestrian behaviors relevant for pedestrian planning research. The interdisciplinary field of human factors combines engineering, psychology, and physiology to study the relationship between humans and technology from a system's perspective. Pedestrian planning research is also an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of engineering, transport, architecture, psychology, and sociology. It studies how pedestrians perform in specific contexts – such as at crossings, in travel choices, during wayfinding, and in egress – in both routine and emergency situations. Both fields share a focus on efficiency and safety, and therefore complement each other well. However, despite this, engineers who practice pedestrian planning and design or use technologies that can monitor or interact with pedestrians, do not typically have extensive experience in human factors. Consequently, such pedestrian systems rarely incorporate deep understanding of human behavior, some of which can be counterintuitive. To address these limitations, this chapter first introduces a framework to understand human factors in pedestrian planning research, including the dimensions: (1) observable versus non-observable behaviors, (2) conscious versus unconscious behaviors, (3) physical versus psychological crowds, (4) routine versus emergency situations, and (5) urban versus rural environments. Next, the most common human factors in pedestrian planning research and their influence on operational, tactical, and strategical pedestrian behaviors are considered at three levels: (1) individual, (2) social, and (3) environmental human factors.

Building fires can be considered a risk to the health and safety of occupants. Environmental factors in building fires might affect the speed of an evacuation. Therefore, in this study participants (N = 153) were tested in an experimental design for the effects of (1) a fire alarm, (2) darkness and (3) the use of emergency exit signs on building evacuation time. In addition, the effects of age and gender on evacuation time were investigated. The main results indicate that the combination of a fire alarm, darkness and not illuminated emergency exit signs had a significant negative influence on evacuation time, namely an increase in evacuation time of 26.6% respectively 28.1%. Another important finding is that age had a significant negative effect on evacuation time. The increase in evacuation time was at least 30.4% for participants aged 56 years or older compared to participants aged 18–25 years. For gender no significant effect was found. Building and safety managers can use these results by including longer evacuation time considerations – based on darkness and older age – in their evacuation plans. Future research should focus further on investigating the effects of personal and psychological characteristics on evacuation behaviour and evacuation time.