Human behaviour issues are relevant especially in emergency conditions (e.g.: emergency evacuation and following post-disaster phases) and are noticed at both small (building) and wide (urban) scale. In fact, in case of disaster, the individuals’ safety depends on interactions between buildings vulnerability, related post-event damages and environmental conditions, human reaction to hazardous situations. As demonstrated by the recent research at the BS&T Lab, such interferences are critical in case of different man made (i.e. fire, terrorist acts) and natural (i.e. flooding, earthquake) emergencies because of built environment features like: intrinsic hazard (i.e.: presence of fire sources due to hosted activities and to existing plants; positioning in earthquake or floods hazard-prone areas); intrinsic built elements vulnerability and correlation with event-induced damages (e.g.: materials fire vulnerabilities; seismic vulnerability; structural vulnerability to floods); spatial layout, especially in complex spaces like urban ones, historical scenarios and public buildings, which can have also hinder safety to specific individuals’ categories (e.g.: disabled, elderly); possible individuals’ low familiarity with the layout (i.e.: visitors, tourists); high hosted people’s density, that introduce crowding safety stressors; organization of emergency management to cope with disaster by supporting the population evacuation (i.e.: evacuation plan; monitoring, alarm systems, wayfinding facilities). BS&T Lab work focuses on a behavioral point of view and defines a “behavioral design” (BD) approach for increasing people’s safety in architectural spaces [1]. BD is aimed at adapting architectural spaces depending on human behaviors. Defining how individuals behave in emergency conditions seem to be able to provide an essential issue for safety assessment evaluation and risk-reduction strategies proposals. Representing evacuees-evacuees, evacuees-environment and evacuees-emergency management system interactions could be highlighted during the assessment and design phase, and so focused interventions on built environment and evacuation planning strategies could be proposed.

Application sectors:

Historical sites

Restoration and conservation of CH

Risk management

Application sectors

Objectives:

Consumers’ awareness and information, trust building

Supporting strategies, regulatory frameworks legislation and standards at EU and national levels

Regional/Local development

Knowledge sharing and education

Topics

Communities:

Heritage at risk

Communities