Behavioral Research on Fire Evacuation and Decision-Making Processes
A special issue of Fire (ISSN 2571-6255). This special issue belongs to the section "Fire Risk Assessment and Safety Management in Buildings and Urban Spaces".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2026 | Viewed by 912
Editor
Interests: fire safety engineering; evacuation; building and construction; urban planning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
It is nearly impossible to avoid having fire accidents, and occupants evacuating from hazardous areas should be considered as a mitigation measure. Evacuation often involves delays, hesitation, and unpredictable actions like returning back to retrieve belongings or to help others. These behavioral reactions relating to fire evacuation may be considered as individual actions or group reactions, including decision-making, movement patterns, risk perception, and social interactions. Some studies have revealed the pre-evacuation behavioral decision time may be much longer than the time taken for traveling to the place of safety. It implies that the pre-evacuation decision-making process may influence the success or failure of evacuations. By studying these behaviors, researchers and engineers may establish more effective safety protocols that save lives and minimize injuries. Moreover, research findings may provide “behavioral facts” to refine computer simulation models, making simulations more accurate and predictive. Carefully studying the pre-evacuation decision-making process, which involves recognition, validation, definition, and evaluation stages, may provide insights influencing the design of warning system, public announcement, facility management, and planning of evacuation strategies. During evacuation, helping evacuees to efficiently find their way out of the hazardous place is also important. Wayfinding heavily relates to the behavioral reactions of evacuees during evacuations, interacting with psychological factors like stress and social influence. Previous studies have indicated that well-designed signages not only accelerates route selection but also alleviates anxiety. We also need to explore ways to help disabled people evacuate safely from buildings by considering their movement and behaviour. We encourage authors to submit papers that thoroughly investigate the above-mentioned issues.
Prof. Dr. Siu Ming Lo
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fire is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- fire evacuation modeling
- fire safety engineering
- fire risk analysis
- decision support system
- human behavior in fire
- large-scale evacuation modeling and disaster prevention
- rail tunnel evacuation
- fire detection
- fire alarm system
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