People’s Subjective Estimation of Fire Growth: An Experimental Study of Young Adults
Författare
Redaktör
- Michael Spearpoint
Summary, in English
An experiment was carried out to examine the subjective estimation of fire growth for young adults and their perceived ability to extinguish fires. In the experiment, participants filled out a questionnaire consisting of two parts. The first part involved prediction of fire growth, and the participants were asked to estimate the times between different stages of fires. The second part involved estimation of the ability to extinguish different fires, and the participants were asked about their ability to extinguish the fires with a portable foam extinguisher. The results suggest that young adults are not very good at predicting fire growth, or the seriousness of a fire. There is a great variation in the estimations of the time lapsed between different stages of a fire, which means that the heat release rate of the fire often is greatly over- or underestimated. In predicting fire growth, no differences could be found between males and females or people with previous experience of fires. In addition, a great proportion of the test participants believed that a fire was too large to extinguish with a portable foam extinguisher when it in fact was not.
Avdelning/ar
Publiceringsår
2011
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
161-172
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
[Host publication title missing]
Länkar
Dokumenttyp
Konferensbidrag
Förlag
International Association of Fire Safety Science
Ämne
- Building Technologies
- Other Civil Engineering
Nyckelord
- human behaviour
- human factors
- fire growth
- subjective estimation
- extinguishment.
Conference name
10th International Symposium of Fire Safety Science
Conference date
2011-06-20
Conference place
University of Maryland, United States
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 1817-4299