Research on spatial information transmission efficiency and capability of safety evacuation signs

Fires in buildings are among the high-frequency disasters experienced in urban areas. Improving the efficiency of emergency evacuation during fires can effectively reduce casualties. Safety evacuation signs offer indispensable spatial direction information for emergency evacuation, and the spatial relationship between safety signs and evacuees affects response times as well as evacuation efficiency. The research presented in this paper took two kinds of safety evacuation signs-namely, hangtag-type and embedded-as the research object, and a simulation experiment and fire drill were designed to gauge the transfer efficiency and capability of the spatial direction information they conveyed. The results show that the space angle of the hangtag-type safety evacuation sign was inversely proportional to the transfer efficiency and capability of the spatial direction information, and a fire drill confirmed this conclusion. When the spatial angle of the embedded safety evacuation sign was 5 degrees the transfer efficiency and capability of the spatial direction information increased, the participants in the fire drill took less time, on average, to escape, and a higher percentage chose unfamiliar exits. In addition, three-dimensional safety evacuation signs were designed on the basis of the research results, and their functional structure was improved, which can make fire emergency evacuation more efficient.