Using virtual reality to study the effect of information redundancy on evacuation effectiveness

The International Organization for Standardization evacuation alarm (ISO 8201: 2017) is ineffective in initiating evacuation, particularly when people are engaged in pre-evacuation activities, and it is not easy to conduct experiments for evaluating evacuation behavior due to ethical and cost issues. A virtual building emergency where alarms went off while participants were performing activities was created to study the effect of redundancy on evacuation effectiveness. Three alarms were studied: (i) a regular nonverbal ISO alarm, (ii) a speech-inserted ISO alarm, and (iii) a technology-based ISO alarm concept (sound, visual, and haptic information). Evacuation behavior, perceived urgency, and delay time were measured. Results confirmed the effect of redundancy on measurements, and participants complied better with the speech-inserted and technology-based alarms, but there were no differences in evacuation effectiveness between them. Participants perceived higher urgency from the technology-based solution, which can be more adaptive in complicated environments where background noise and language/education barriers are problems. Otherwise, the speech-inserted alarm is more cost-effective.