Human wayfinding abilities to reach an area of refuge in a virtual environment.

Reaching a place of safety inside an unfamiliar environment is a very difficult task, especially for people who cannot immediately access a safe escape route. This includes the disabled, persons assisting others who are prevented from escaping, patients, elderly people and pregnant women. In an evacuation, disabled people are expected to reach an area of refuge inside the building. Areas of refuge (AR) are locations designed to hold occupants inside the building during a fire or other emergency, when evacuation may not be safe or possible. These facilities are designed to let occupants wait until rescued. In Italy, building codes don’t require the presence of these specific spaces inside assembly buildings: only tourist and hotel accommodations are obliged to have them. In addition, neither specific information, nor prescriptions regarding their design are given (see Figures 1 and 2). This is an important consideration because it highlights the fact that designers and building tenants are probably not aware of the importance of areas of refuge. As a consequence, the occupants may not be familiar with their presence inside the building because they have never been trained or instructed to use them. Even in the case AR are present in a building, it could be difficult for people to notice them because these facilities have to be located in places that don’t interfere with evacuation routes and, consequently, they may not be immediately visible to people. Finding an area of refuge in a fire could become a very difficult task. This is particularly true for people affected by sensory and cognitive disabilities, since it is especially difficult for them to process environmental information. Cognitive, motor or perceptual (sight etc.) impairments could affect the users’ ability to reach safe places (such as area of refuge) using environmental cues (such as those proposed in Figures 1 and 2). Given these assumptions, we decided to test people’s ability to reach areas of refuge, in order to understand what the problem in the current design of these kind of environments are and, therefore, set the basis for proposing and testing new design criteria. To do this, we decided to test people’s wayfinding abilities inside a hospital since these places are frequently used by impaired people.