Effect of Wording of Fire Warning Announcements on Evacuation Behavior in Subway Stations

当地铁站内的乘客面临火灾等紧急情况时，他们应该跟随车站工作人员撤离危险区域。然而，车站服务员的数量实际上是相当有限的。考虑到人们在紧急情况下倾向于跟随人群流动的典型行为，在疏散的早期阶段引导人们前往适当的方向非常重要。因此，本研究调查的效率，预计将引导乘客的公告。在东京一个既有地铁站中进行的一系列实验表明，考虑到车站内路径和标志系统的空间特征的公告可能会比传统的公告更顺利地引导受试者，特别是在人们必须下楼梯疏散的情况下。

When the passengers in a subway station face to an emergency situation like a fire, they are expected to follow the station attendant to evacuate from hazardous areas. However, the number of station attendants in fact is quite limited. Considering people's typical behavior that they tend to follow the flow of crowds in an emergency situation, it is important to lead people to appropriate direction in an early stage of evacuation. This research thus investigates the efficiency of the announcement that is expected to guide the passengers. A series of experiments conducted in an existing subway station in Tokyo revealed that the announcement that considers the spatial features of the paths and sign system in the station may lead the subjects more smoothly than conventional one particularly in the cases when people have to once go down the stair to evacuate.