Buildings
Interviews Drive Ongoing WTC Evacuation Study
(archrecord.construction.com - 08/31/2006)
By Sam
Lubell
Most studies that have been conducted
to test the structural integrity of the Twin Towers, such
as last year’s comprehensive report by the National Institute
of Standards and Technology (NIST), utilize computer simulation
and materials analysis. One British research project, still
underway, relies solely on interviews with people who escaped
the buildings.
Ed Galea, a professor of fire safety engineering at University
of Greenwich, England, oversees HEED, or High-Rise Evacuation
Evaluation Database. He is investigating whether or not the
World Trade Center buildings were well suited for a quick
evacuation, and why evacuees left the building in the manner
that they did. The project, funded by a $2.75 million grant
from the British Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
Council (EPSRC), began in September 2004 and will continue
through next year. To date more than 300 interviews have been
conducted, and Galea hopes the total will reach 1,000.
|
“It’s a fairly unique project in that we’re
looking at a mix of psychology and engineering,” says
Galea, who also is working with scholars from the universities
of Ulster and Greenwich. Interview queries broach the processes
by which people left the buildings, their reasons for responding
to fire alarms at varying speeds, why they might have moved
slowly down stairs, and whether or not they yielded to evacuees
entering at lower floors, listened to building superintendents’
commands, and considered exiting the building to be a risk.
There is no video footage of stairwell evacuation.
Galea says that the results of the study, to be released
in November 2007, will encourage faster fire-alarm response
and evacuations. He also predicts the research will result
in better building codes and more accurate evacuation-simulation
software.
The exhaustive interviews can require as much as two hours.
Data are broken down into categories such as “response
times” and “motivating factors for leaving.”
“People in the building who evacuated are the experts,”
Galea says; similar investigations, like the NIST effort,
use questionnaires, which limit the range of responses. After
the project is complete, full interview transcripts as well
as researchers’ analysis will be distributed to engineers
and made accessible to the public on wtc-evacuation.com. Interview
candidates can also consult this site to learn more about
participating in the study.
|
