Wayfinding Behaviour in Unfamiliar Environment during Evacuation

Abstract

This research intends to explore city visitors’ evacuation wayfinding behaviour. This research field has been consistently overlooked. There is no doubt the city visitors have difficulties in finding ways during evacuation, due to lack of knowledge and unfamiliarity of the environment. To start with, an explicit literature study is performed. It introduces Dynamic Disaster Model and illustrates the evacuation responses of city visitors in respect of travel choices. Further, it identifies six categories of wayfinding factors, including personal profile, spatial abilities, wayfinding strategy, psychological condition, spatial layout and navigational aids. Based on the literature study, a theoretical framework of evacuation wayfinding process is proposed and hypotheses of city visitors’ evacuation wayfinding behaviour are assumed, with respect to six types of wayfinding factors. To examine the hypotheses, an evacuation experiment based on driving simulator is conducted. It is found that the gender, spatial abilities, wayfinding strategies and psychological condition have significant impact on evacuation wayfinding in this experiment. The gender and spatial abilities are major determinants of evacuation wayfinding performance. Finally, on the basis of literature study and experiment result, a conceptual evacuation wayfinding model is constructed, which explains how city visitors find ways in a vehicular-based urban evacuation.