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People’s Subjective Estimation of Fire Growth: An Experimental Study of Young Adults

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Author

  • Karl Fridolf
  • Daniel Nilsson

Editor

  • Michael Spearpoint

Summary, in English

An experiment was carried out to examine the subjective estimation of fire growth for young adults and their perceived ability to extinguish fires. In the experiment, participants filled out a questionnaire consisting of two parts. The first part involved prediction of fire growth, and the participants were asked to estimate the times between different stages of fires. The second part involved estimation of the ability to extinguish different fires, and the participants were asked about their ability to extinguish the fires with a portable foam extinguisher. The results suggest that young adults are not very good at predicting fire growth, or the seriousness of a fire. There is a great variation in the estimations of the time lapsed between different stages of a fire, which means that the heat release rate of the fire often is greatly over- or underestimated. In predicting fire growth, no differences could be found between males and females or people with previous experience of fires. In addition, a great proportion of the test participants believed that a fire was too large to extinguish with a portable foam extinguisher when it in fact was not.

Publishing year

2011

Language

English

Pages

161-172

Publication/Series

[Host publication title missing]

Document type

Conference paper

Publisher

International Association of Fire Safety Science

Topic

  • Building Technologies
  • Other Civil Engineering

Keywords

  • human behaviour
  • human factors
  • fire growth
  • subjective estimation
  • extinguishment.

Conference name

10th International Symposium of Fire Safety Science

Conference date

2011-06-20

Conference place

University of Maryland, United States

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1817-4299