EFFECT OF WORDING OF FIRE WARNING ANNOUNCEMENTS CONSIDERING SPATIAL FEATURES IN SUBWAY STATIONS ON EVACUATION BEHAVIOR

When passengers in a subway station face a fire, they are expected to follow instructions from station attendants to evacuate from hazardous areas. However, the number of station attendants available in any one place is in fact quite limited. For this study investigating the effectiveness of loudspeaker announcements guiding passengers during an emergency, a series of experiments was conducted in an existing subway station in Tokyo, revealing that announcements that take into account signs and spatial features of the paths in the station are able to direct subjects more smoothly than those typically employed up to now, particularly in cases where people have to take unintuitive routes such as going downstairs first to reach the exit.