Fire safety in Italian-style historical theatres: How photoluminescent wayfinding can improve occupants' evacuation with no architecture modifications

Architectural Heritage is often prone to fire risk especially when many significant wooden structures with a particular historic and artistic value are present. This is the case of the Italian style historical theatres. Increasing fire safety of this architectural heritage generally clashes with preserving the original building features: massive and irreversible interventions are often needed so as to respect current severe regulations. Moreover, upgrading interventions can be insufficient so as to effectively improve occupants’ safety level, especially in overcrowded spaces and when people do not know much of the building itself. Occupants’ safety depends on their behaviours and their possibility to rapidly evacuate to a safe place. One of the most effective ways to help them to achieve this aim seems to be the adoption of a good emergency evacuation wayfinding system, especially in smoke or black-out conditions. This paper analyses the effectiveness of a reversible, easy-to-remove and low-impact system for evacuation guidance based on photoluminescent materials (PLM). The proposed continuous wayfinding system (CWS) is composed by PLM tiles along evacuation paths (both corridors and stairs). The application to a case study, the Italian style historical theatre “Gentile da Fabriano”, is then provided. Tests involve more than 100 individuals in smoke and black out conditions. CWS effectiveness was compared to a traditional punctual system in terms of motion speeds (for single pedestrians) and total evacuation time (for the whole building evacuation drill). Questionnaires filled in by involved pedestrians qualitatively evaluated the individuals’ acceptance of CWS. Tests with CWS show that individual's motion speed rises up to 50% and the total evacuation time is reduced down to 25% in respect to the traditional system. Comparisons with previous studies on PLM signs are provided. CWS can be easily introduced in this kind of historical theatres so as to increase the occupants’ safety level.