Fire Evacuation and Exit Design in Heritage Cultural Centres

This book highlights human behaviour and architectural considerations for prescriptive code requirements for emergency exits in heritage cultural centers. Closed circuit television camera (CCTV) footage from a Canadian heritage cultural centre was analyzed from three separate unannounced evacuations, where recommendations based on the first two evacuations were implemented for the third. This study aims to (1) develop a baseline for the behaviour and actions of people during the pre-movement and movement stages of emergency egress and evacuation situations and (2) collect behavioural and movement data to aid the fire safety community with the decision process for egress and evacuation strategies and (3) interrogate and highlight architectural barriers in heritage structures with respect to emergency evacuation. The discussion of findings includes occupant behaviour, architectural implications and evacuation modelling and considers the often-conflicting intersection between architectural conservation and fire safety.