Human Behaviour in Fire is the study of human response including; people’s awareness, beliefs, attitudes, motivations, decisions, behaviours and coping strategies in exposure to fire and other similar emergencies in buildings, structures and transportation systems. The study of human behaviour in fire is highly multidisciplinary, involving practitioners from the fields of engineering, architecture, computer science, mathematics, law, sociology, psychology, human factors, communications and ergonomics to mention just a few. The primary focus of human behaviour research and its translation into practice is to minimise the risk to people from fire. This is achieved by generating and collecting quantitative and qualitative data and information on human responses which can be used to develop human fire response theory for use in fire safety engineering design, performance based regulatory systems, computational models and fire safety management.

Jim Shields, University of Ulster, Symposium Chair
Jason Averill, NIST, USA
Karen Boyce University of Ulster, UK
Dorothy Bruck, Victoria University of Technology, Australia
Rita Fahy, NFPA, USA
Carole Franks, Interscience Communications Ltd, UK
Hakan Frantzich, Lund University, Sweden
Edwin Galea, University of Greenwich, UK
Glenn Hedman,University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Morgan Hurley, SFPE, USA
Erica Kuligowski, NIST, USA
Brian Meachem, Worcester Polytechnic instute, USA
Daniel Nilsson, Lund University, Sweden
Rosario Ono, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Amanda Robbins, BRANZ, New Zealand
Ai Sekizawa, Tokyo University of Science, Japan
Ian Thomas, Victoria University of Technology, Australia
Tomonori Sano, Waseda University, Japan
Steve Gwynne, Hughes Associates, UK