How does spatial cognitive style affect indoor fire evacuation wayfinding in mobile virtual reality?

ABSTRACT

In emergency situations such as fire evacuation, indoor wayfinding is a complex and challenging task that is closely related to spatial cognition and spatial ability. This study discusses the indoor wayfinding ability of evacuees from the perspective of spatial cognitive style. Spatial cognitive style can be divided into: landmark, route, survey (ordered from low to high). We measured the spatial cognitive style of participants, created a realistic virtual scene with a LiDAR scanner, and finally captured real behavior data using mobile virtual reality. The results show that people with a survey style can better extract information from an evacuation map and use it correctly, and they have a stronger sense of direction and cognition of the evacuation scene. People with a route or landmark style rely more on evacuation signs and following others to find their way and are more likely to lose their way in an emergency. These findings are helpful to explain the differences in wayfinding strategies and escape results of people in a fire evacuation.

KEYWORDS:

• Spatial cognitive style
• fire evacuation
• indoor wayfinding
• mobile virtual reality
• Evacuation behavior

Author contributions

Conceptualization, Jun Zhu; Methodology, Pei Dang; Resources, Jigang You and Xiaoqi Qiao; Software, Pei Dang and Jianlin Wu; Validation, Jun Zhu, Weilian Li; Writing – original draft, Pei Dang; Writing – review & editing, Jun Zhu and Lin Fu. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data and codes that support the findings of this study are available in figshare.com with the identifier https://figshare.com/ndownloader/files/39169283. The data are not publicly available because they contain information that could compromise the privacy of the research participants. The experiment was reviewed and approved by the university’s institutional review board. All participants provided written consent.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 42271424; 42171397; 41871289), Sichuan Transportation Science and Technology Program (2021-B-02).