The effectiveness of evacuation signs in buildings based on eye tracking experiment

It is of crucial importance whether or not evacuees follow the evacuation signs during building evacuation. It is necessary for effective evacuation signs to be designed in a way that helps the occupants follow building safety guidelines. In this paper, 658 evacuation experiments with wearable eye tracking devices were carried out to test the effectiveness of both the setting positions and design of evacuation signs in buildings. There are four factors considered in this paper: (1) position, (2) colour, (3) graphics, and (4) (or flashing). The results show that the effect of the green arrow evacuation sign is the best. The effect of low (corridor) signs works better than those of high (room) signs, but the signs of low (corridor) could be blocked by the front evacuees. Obtaining the ratio of people obeying the evacuation signs under different conditions provides an effective basis for the improvement in design for building safety, and provides data support for computer simulation modelling of crowd evacuation.