How to increase occupants safety with no architectural modifications: Defining effective wayfinding systems

Wayfinding is ones of the most significant issues during a fire evacuation in Historical Buildings, mainly because of possible building layout complexity, level of occupants’ familiarity with the architectural spaces, and potential environmental modifications due to fire effects. Proper wayfinding systems could be able to increase safety levels for occupants by reducing the egress time. Furthermore, these solutions are generally able to maintain a low impact on the building itself (and on its layout). However, according to a Behavioral design (BD) approach, they should be designed in order to effective provide the needed assistance to evacuees, by "interacting" with their behaviours. This chapter firstly offers an organization of existing wayfinding strategies, by mainly distinguishing active and passive systems (since they can bring or not "dynamic" directional information to the evacuees). The attention is focused on the interaction with human behaviors and the possibility to apply the systems (and related building components) to Building Heritage scenarios. Methodologies to evaluate the evacuation facilities effectiveness are outlined according to previous researches and BD studies recommendations.