Measurement Techniques for Unannounced Evacuation Experiments

There are many available measurement techniques for documenting people’s movement patterns, but not all of them are appropriate for unannounced evacuation experiments. An unannounced evacuation requires that participants are not influenced beforehand. In addition, experiments are performed in all types of buildings and low ceiling height is often a problem. This paper describes three techniques that can be used for unannounced evacuation experiments, namely (1) filming from above – cameras with wide angle lenses, (2) triangulation with two cameras, and (3) distance measurement with a laser scanner. The description is based on the results from a research study in which the three measurement techniques were tested and evaluated. The study also involved collection of data in unannounced evacuation experiments.