IAFSS Symposium 2023

The International Association for Fire Safety Science organized a Symposium in Tsukuba, Japan during October 2023. This week-long symposium included a track on human behaviour in fire and evacuation and a dedicated workshop on the topic which took place the Sunday before the conference. The Sunday workshop included a set of presentations and discussions related to the ongoing work of the permanent group on human behaviour in fires led by Enrico Ronchi and Erica Kuligowski. This included the arrangement of a webinar series and the development of a research agenda for the field. Several important discussion points were brought up, including the need for training opportunities for early career researchers and a specific event entirely dedicated to the field.

During the symposium, three sessions were dedicated to evacuation along with two keynote talks. The conference was opened by a tribute to Rita Fahy by the chair of IAFSS, Brian Meacham, Erica Kuligowski and Daniel Nilsson. Rita was a pioneer of the field of evacuation modelling with her model Exit89 which was developed in the 80ies and has been used for the investigation of the World Trade Centre performed by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). Rita passed away during summer 2023, leaving a strong impact on the human behaviour in fire community with her work on the panic misconception, evacuation simulations and quantification of evacuation behaviour for fire engineering applications. The tribute was followed by the Howard Emmons award-winning talk by David Purser focused on understanding evacuation behaviour in presence of smoke and toxic gases.

The talk gave a comprehensive overview on the research in the domain providing valuable insights into the state-of-the-art of fire evacuation behaviour. The second keynote of the symposium was also on the topic of evacuation and was given by Yuki Akizuki. The focus of Akizuki’s talk was evacuation route design considering the impact of reduced visibility conditions due to smoke. Presentations during the symposium included three sessions on evacuation and human behaviour in fire and were chaired by Enrico Ronchi, Rosaria Ono and Daniel Nilsson. They included a wide range of topics, such as the use of novel methods to collect pedestrian movement and evacuation behaviour data (e.g., VR and online experiments), exploration of laypeople knowledge of evacuation, design of evacuation signage and way-finding systems, and evacuation of vulnerable groups such as children and people with functional limitations.

On the Friday after the Symposium, a group of approximately 15 researchers interested in evacuation behaviour gathered in an informal meeting arranged at the University of Tokyo by Claudio Feliciani. This was a valuable opportunity to discuss collaborative efforts in the field and share experiences concerning pedestrian and evacuation data collection and modelling activities. All in all, the IAFSS Symposium and its related activities have been a fantastic opportunity for the evacuation community to meet and learn from each other research efforts in the field.

The 15th IAFSS International Symposium is set to convene in 2026 at the scenic locale of La Rochelle, France. This event promises to continue the esteemed tradition of fostering dialogue and sharing groundbreaking research in the field of fire safety science.

By: Enrico Ronchi

Edited by: Mohcine Chraibi