Abstract
Although the provision of a safe escape route is the main process in evacuation system, it is not sufficient to guarantee hazard-free egress. The escape route should be well recognized by oucupants and enable them to reach locations of safty easily in the case of a fire. Standing on this viewpoint, the objective of the current study is to seize the tendency of escape direction of occupants. In a laboratory, subjects viewed pairs of slide projections and for each pairs they were asked which direction they would chose if they were involved in the case of a fire. Through analysys of responses to pairs of slide projections by the method of Thurstone's unidimensional and Nishisato's multidimensional scaling, the test has disclosed that visibility is the main factor of escape direction.
