Fire Evacuation and Exit Design in Heritage Cultural Centres

This book highlights human behaviour and architectural considerations for prescriptive code requirements for emergency exits in heritage cultural centers. Closed circuit television camera (CCTV) footage from a Canadian heritage cultural centre was analyzed from three separate unannounced evacuations, where recommendations based on the first two evacuations were implemented for the third. This study aims to (1) develop a baseline for the behaviour and actions of people during the pre-movement and movement stages of emergency egress and evacuation situations and (2) collect behavioural and movement data to aid the fire safety community with the decision process for egress and evacuation strategies and (3) interrogate and highlight architectural barriers in heritage structures with respect to emergency evacuation. The discussion of findings includes occupant behaviour, architectural implications and evacuation modelling and considers the often-conflicting intersection between architectural conservation and fire safety.

Dr. John Gales is an Associate Professor at York University in the Department of Civil Engineering in Toronto, Canada, where he leads their Fire Safety Research Group. He has previously taught within Carleton University’s Architectural Conservation and Sustainability program. He currently is a registered Professional Engineer in Ontario, Canada. He has been recipient of 12 major NSERC Canada research grants in the last five years and to date he has nearly 200 scientific contributions. He is one of four Task Group Chairs in the Fire Protection Committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the leading structural fire committee in the United States and voting member on the Canadian Building Code Standing Committee on Fire Protection (CCBFC).

René Champagne is a Fire Protection Engineer at Parks Canada where he is responsible for the development and implementation of the Agency’s fire protection and prevention program.  He is currently a registered Professional Engineer in the province of Ontario and holds a master's degree in Civil Engineering with a specialization in fire safety at Carleton University. René has collaborated with York University as a Research Associate since graduating from Carleton University.  He is a recognized expert on evacuation and exit use as he serves on the Standing Committee on Use and Egress of the Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes.

Georgette Harun has a master’s degree in Civil Engineering from York University. Her research interests include structural engineering, fire safety engineering and heritage conservation. She studied the fire resilience of heritage materials, specifically masonry and timber and human behaviour considerations for heritage buildings. She graduated with distinction from her undergraduate degree in Architectural Conservation and Sustainability Engineering, Structural Stream, from Carleton University in Ottawa. During her studies, she also had an impactful internship at Heritage Conservation Services in Public Services and Procurement Canada. She now works at Arup Montreal as a Graduate Structural Designer.

Hannah Carton is a graduate student with a specialization in fire safety at York University. She graduated with her B.Eng. in Environmental Engineering from Carleton University. During her undergraduate studies, she worked with the University of Waterloo’s Fire Research Group. She also studied coupled evacuation modelling and its implications for wildland fires.

Dr Michael Kinsey is a senior fire engineer within Arup based in Shanghai, China. Within Arup Fire he is a technical focus group leader for human behaviour in fire and evacuation modelling. As part of this role he helps leaders in other global regions within the focus group conduct activities which further understanding of human behaviour in fire through research and promotes its consideration within the design process. He is also Arup East Asia Fire Skills Network Manager where he helps coordinate and manage various fire team skills activities across the region.