Determinants of Gaps in Human Behaviour in Fire Research

The International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS) has established a Human Behaviour in Fires permanent working group, which started its work in conjunction with the 2021 IAFSS Symposium. In parallel with its establishment, a workshop was arranged to identify a set of initial activities for the group to pursue. The key task identified was the development of a research agenda for the field (similarly to what has been recently done to the wider fire science domain [1]) and, in pursuit of this, a set of key preliminary activities have been performed. This included the mapping of existing knowledge and its temporal evolution through a bibliometric analysis of the human behaviour in fire field, which has already been published [2]. A second item of ongoing work includes a wide review of the research gaps already identified in existing relevant literature, e.g. [3‐10]. Following this work identifying research gaps, the Human Behaviour in Fires group conducted two workshops in 2023 to discuss the determinants of those research gaps. This short communication presents the results of those workshops, considering the factors affecting the occurrence of the research gaps identified in the literature review and bibliometric analysis, as well as new research gaps that emerged from the discussions.

Two workshops were conducted on the 27th of September 2023 and the 2nd of October 2023. Both events were arranged remotely to facilitate the participation of experts located in different time-zones. The workshops lasted approximately 1.5 h each and involved a total of twenty active experts in the field of human behaviour in fire and related fields aiming at a wide distribution of background, expertise (covering both building fire and wildfire scenarios), geographical distribution, career level, and application fields. The participants all actively contributed to the workshops and the work conducted and are, therefore, listed here as co-authors of this short communication.

The goal of the workshops was to identify and understand the most significant determinants of research gaps (henceforth also referred to as obstacles) that may limit or hinder the advancement of human behaviour in fire research. In other words, research obstacles were rated by twenty experts in the field to identify the most critical ones. In addition, the workshops were intended to identify human behaviour in fire research that would have been done in the past but that could not be performed currently due to such obstacles. In addition to ranking the importance of the listed determinants of the research gaps, participants were also able to identify additional key issues. This was performed in an open discussion where participants commented on the perceived importance of the obstacles and their impact on the human behaviour in fire field. It should be noted that participants were instructed to comment on the research obstacles considering not only their own sub-field of research but also taking into account the needs of the community and the wider field.

The workshops were coordinated by the two first authors of this paper. The participants were first presented with a preliminary list of research gaps identified in the previous work conducted by the Human Behaviour in Fires permanent group. These were initially grouped based on the evacuation time-line (e.g. pre-evacuation and movement phase) [11], the overall theme/method they covered (e.g. data collection, modelling, etc.), and context (i.e., building fire or wildfire). The research gaps were then matched by the two workshop coordinators with potential obstacles causing them. The obstacles were then reviewed by a sub-group of four members of the research team (led by the first author of this paper) in an iterative process aimed at refining their definitions and grouping them. This allowed for a final grouping of the obstacles into a set of core themes.

Research obstacles were presented to the workshop participants according to three main categories, namely (1) logistical obstacles, (2) research-focused obstacles, and (3) ethical/legal obstacles. The two workshops were structured in a consistent manner, including first an introduction on the goals of the workshop, followed by an online poll in which participants could vote and comment on the three categories. The last part of the workshop was left for an open discussion in which participants provided more general comments on the causes of the research gaps and could bring up further issues. After approval by the participants (at the start of each workshop), the workshops were recorded and later transcribed to ensure that their content could be analysed and later reported.

The initial list of research obstacles identified prior to the workshop included 17 items which were refined into a shorter list of 13 research obstacles which were later presented to the workshop participants. The process of reducing the obstacles from 17 to 13 included grouping similar obstacles into a single item. This list of identified research obstacles was grouped into the categories of five logistical obstacles, five research-focused obstacles, and three ethical/legal obstacles which are defined and discussed briefly below. It should be noted that the obstacles presented are not mutually exclusive, i.e. certain research obstacles are connected with each other.

Logistical obstacles.

Research-focused obstacles.

Ethical/legal obstacles.

An online polling tool was used to obtain the participants' rating of the importance of the research obstacles with a 5-point Likert Scale (where − 2 meant the obstacle was deemed not important at all and + 2 indicated a very important obstacle). The importance of a research obstacle related to its significance towards research gaps. The resulting voting is presented in Fig. 1, where the research obstacles are ranked from top to bottom from the one that received the highest to the lowest average importance rating. The most important obstacles were found to be researcher literacy, difficulties in finding study participants, multi-disciplinary barriers, and funding.

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Considering the most important research obstacles identified in the workshop, researcher literacy refers to the fact that human behaviour in fire is a field that relates to multiple disciplines, therefore some researchers may not be fully familiar with the wide range of technology or methodologies in use. This is combined with a fairly limited set of opportunities for training and education. This includes formal education (e.g. courses at undergraduate or graduate level), short courses as well as doctorate programmes related to the domain. The discussion in the workshops indeed highlighted that it has been very difficult to attract a new critical mass of people, given the limited educational opportunities along with fewer opportunities for the community to gather. While the Human Dimensions of Wildland Fire Conference by the International Association for Wildland Fires exists for the wildfire domain, the last dedicated human behaviour in fire symposium related to the building context happened in 2015. Since then, there have been mostly workshop-type events that have been limited in terms of duration and number of participants when compared to a full conference. These workshop-type events also generally do not result in extended dissemination (e.g. they may lack proceedings), meaning that the dissemination of their results become limited. It is therefore advisable to introduce new initiatives aimed at training and educating researchers in the field. On this matter, the human behaviour in fire permanent working group currently hosts a webinar series. This can be seen as a first step towards promoting the use of different methodological approaches and enhance community knowledge exchange. Future initiatives may aim at developing further training and educational opportunities for people in related fields which may have an interest in human behaviour in fire.

Another important aspect is the ongoing debate on the need for more representative populations when performing experimental research in the human behaviour in fire field (especially in the building fire domain). For example, the latest Human Behaviour in Fire Symposium hosted a panel discussion moderated by Dr Rita Fahy highlighting how ageing populations and access to public buildings increased the challenge of providing safe evacuation for all [21]. In contrast, a large proportion of existing research is focused on healthy adult populations, with only a few exceptions, e.g., [22‐24]. Research considering people with functional limitations presents challenges due to safety and ethical making it difficult to investigate this group [25]. For instance, people with cognitive limitations are almost completely neglected in the field mostly due to their inability to provide informed consent [3]. The recruitment of such populations, though, is challenging, meaning that certain areas and the impact of functional limitations remain largely unexplored.

For both individual and crowd evacuation experiments [26] as well as for community evacuation exercises [27], identifying and persuading a large number of volunteers can be difficult. It is, therefore, not surprising that difficulties in finding study participants was ranked as one of the most important determinants of research gaps. This issue is exacerbated when the target population under consideration needs to meet specific criteria.

Finally, securing funding for human behaviour in fire research was listed as one of the key determinants. Funding research presents several challenges associated with both systematic and practical factors. The time to obtain funding is generally too long compared to the need for deploying researchers to collect behavioural data on-site when a fire occurs. In addition, funding agencies and organisations often allocate resources based on perceived societal impact, scientific novelty, and potential economic returns. Despite the repeated occurrence of devasting fires that claim multiple lives (e.g. the Mati wildfire [28] or the Grenfell Tower fire [29]), and the efforts of the fire science community to highlight the societal consequences of fires, [1], fire safety and safety in general may not be seen as a priority by national funders. Additionally, the complexity of studying human behaviour in fire scenarios adds an additional layer of complication. Conducting research in this field often requires multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaborations, advanced technologies, and the collection of potentially sensitive data, all of which entail significant costs and ethical challenges.

Funding agencies may be hesitant to invest in research projects with high resource requirements and ethical concerns. In the building context, the human behaviour in fire field is rooted in the fire engineering world, where resources are rarely allocated for the exploration of a fundamental understanding of a subject. Several debates concerning fire safety research funding allocation have also concerned the wildfire domain, discussing the need for a better understanding of how humans behave during emergencies [30, 31]. Moreover, there may be a lack of awareness among funding agencies and policymakers about the importance of research in human behaviour in fire, as building regulatory perspectives (and subsequent engineering analysis) often place more emphasis on fire-related elements rather than human behaviour. Despite its critical role in informing fire safety standards, building designs, and emergency management strategies, the human behaviour in fire field tends to be under-prioritised. As a result, funding allocations may be focused on other research areas that are perceived as more pressing or economically viable. Research opportunities in the field (and in many other safety fields) are often associated with the occurrence of large disasters. As a result, they are often rapidly formulated initiatives, that are ill conceived, poorly funded and resourced with unrealistic timescales that often fail to address fundamental issues. Rather than these reactive initiatives, what is required is a systematic effort to address fundamental issues. This short communication advocates for a reorientation of thinking, i.e. to switch from a funding-after-disaster approach to proactive and systematic research funding opportunities aimed at steadily improving human behaviour in fire knowledge.

This paper presents the findings of the work conducted by the Human Behaviour in Fires permanent working group of IAFSS related to the identification of the determinants of research gaps in the field. Two workshops were arranged, and the key identified research gap determinants were researcher literacy (intended as the researcher's knowledge of a variety of methods and technology used in the field), difficulties in finding study participants, multi-disciplinary barriers and funding. To face these obstacles, it is advisable for the Human Behaviour in Fires field to seek more collaborations both within and outside its community, arrange further educational opportunities, and promote activities that highlight the importance of systematic research funding.