Excerpt from Occupant Behavior in Building FiresFire safety in buildings is important in building design and the formulation of codes and standards. However, an examination of the information concerning the needs of occupants in fire emergencies (as Opposed to ensuring a degree of structural integrity for the building) indicates that the scientific information base is woefully inadequate. The increasing prominence of high rise buildings having many occupants intensifies the need for better information about the behavior of occupants during fire emergencies. Fire researchers have indicated that it is often not feasible to evacuate buildings because of time constraints. Instead, designers use techniques such as safe areas within buildings and requiring people to respond differentially, based on their particular location. This approach emphasizes communications and warning systems to transmit messages. These systems such as loud noises or blinking lights should be designed to take advantage of the usual responses made by pe0p1e. Occupants can actively be a part of the fire warning and fighting system instead of being unwilling victims. This possibility is pursued and a human factors approach is taken to suggest some means of better understanding the capabilities of occupants.Key Words: Disaster research, high rise building fires, occupant safety.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.