CC BY
23УДК 614.841.3 DOI 10.25257/FE.2021.1.78-81
FURS Vitaly
PhD in Political Science, Associate Professor
State Fire Academy of EMERCOM of Russia, Moscow, Russia
E-mail: vitaly.furs@yandex.ru
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL EXPERIMENT IN FIRE PREVENTION
This paper concerns the specifics of social experiment usage in fire prevention. The necessity for experimental studying individual features of thinking and people's behavior in fire-hazardous situations is proved. This approach makes it possible to identify risk groups and develop preventive measures taking into account mental, psychological, and cultural characteristics of individual social groups.
Key words: social experiment, fire prevention, fire prevention propaganda, fire-hazardous behavior, human factor in fire cases.
Preventive efforts in the sphere of fire safety imply targeted approach for reducing risks connected with fire cases. In this aspect preventive work means the most significant strategic direction in the functioning of fire service as fire prevention requires less economic and human resources than putting out fires and eliminating their consequences. However, the efficiency of preventive measures can be higher if these measures are based on definite scientific information about causes and regularities of inflammation as well as reasons for tragic fire consequences. In many cases when the direct and indirect roots of a fire case are a human factor social experiment could serve as a reliable information source.
Nowadays scientific interest to the role of the human factor has significantly increased at the backstage of major forest fires in different parts of the world. Thus, after analyzing the disastrous consequences of forest fires in Australia and in the state of California (USA) a group of scientists came up with the issue of importance for studying human behavior models in order to analyze the mistakes already made and to elaborate preventive measures [1, 2].
It is also necessary to take into account the intersection of the human factor and the environmental and technological factors the growth of which is based on intense urbanization. Overcoming environmental risk calls for intentional changes in the area of human behavior models and at the same time for toughening the environmental demands towards manufacture, construction activity and transport infrastructure. In order to follow all of the mentioned conditions it is necessary to solve a complex of difficult social contradictions which leads the problem into socio- economic and political area [3]. The new tendencies in community building construction also create new risks and demand adaptation of people's behavior and mentality to the rapidly changing urban infrastructure. In the context of rapidly developing technologies human element remains the main one in the
system of providing fire safety and the study on human factor has critical importance in preventing fires [4].
Currently the most widespread methods of fire prevention are considered to be fire prevention promotion and publicity. Regardless of the forms of such publicity the main goal of this work generally comes down to informing population about two types of situations:
1. What should be done/or not if we pursue the goal to prevent fires.
2. What should be done/or not if a fire occurred. Informing is based on analyzing and generalizing results and the most typical cases of fires.
Nonetheless this issue doesn't imply deep analyzing the reasons of people's improper behavior in fire-hazardous situations and serious investigation on eliminating these causes. Without taking this element into account the evaluation of preventive measures effectiveness seems rather sketchy. Besides that, the content and essence of such promotion and publicity aimed at controlling fires are usually compiled for wider audience not considering the specifics of mental, behavioral, psychological difference between various social groups.
In this aspect differentiated approach could be more useful revealing in advance risk groups and therefore giving the opportunity for targeted work with these groups.
Implementation of social experiment in the sphere of fire safety promotes revealing patterns and behavior models that potentially lead to the emergence of fire-hazardous situations and their tragic consequences. Moreover, using a stratified and quote selection during social experiment enables to define the risk degree and its character for various social groups considering such parameters as age, educational level, profession, religiosity, place and conditions of residence, income level and so on.
Preventive efforts as part of firefighting readiness concern information about the existence of
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misperceptions among the study group representatives and are focused on the lack of knowledge about the most essential aspects of fire safety, namely:
- regulations and norms of using flammable substances, items, devices (storage, usage, transportation, operation). According to the statistics provided by EMERCOM of Russia the majority of fires take place in the residential sector. The results of 2019 show that the percentage of such fires is 74 % out of the total number. This type of fires is accounted for 94 per cent of deaths. Among the main causes are indiscretion of fires (71,3 %), contravention of regulations by the operation of electrical appliances (10,5 %), violation of heating equipment operating regulations (5,8 %). It is obvious that the main cause of each case is a certain action of a human based on misunderstanding potentional danger of treating the fire and fire- hazardous equipment. The causative analysis of these distortions is one of the main tasks of the social experiment in the area of preventing fires;
- natural, technogenic, industrial, social and living conditions of fire occurrence;
- the correct behavior in circumstances of smoke pollution and ignition (self-rescue, saving others, evacuation, self-extinguishing, warning fire department staff). In this case it is a question of the humans, incapability to analyze the extent of danger and make the right decision because of the lack of knowledge. According to the data provided by EMERCOM of Russia the significant amount of tragical cases during fires is due to the long-term residence of people in the area of a fire and to the untimely evacuation. Thus according to the data of 2019 in 62 % of cases the death of people during fires is due to poisoning by the combustion products.
Distorted information and the lack of proper knowledge lead to the continued neglect of potential danger by people, to the mistaken actions at the time of fire hazard, to the wrongdoing during the spread of fire and smoke leakage. Therefore, one of the most important tasks of social experiment in the sphere of fire prevention ought to be detection of information distortion and lack of relevant knowledge among the study group representatives.
The second challenge relates to another complicated problem. It is revealed in circumstances when people possess proper information about fire safety but aren't guided by the rules or don't implement rules when real risk occurs. This is as we see it, dangerous atypical kind of behavior the reasons of which could be latent and difficult for revealing by the way of simple verbal communication or survey.
Let us consider some examples of such behavioral models.
The first model. The person is knowledgeable in the field of fire safety but is consciously ignoring fire safety requirements. So, it is natural for him to smoke regularly in the places where highly inflammable stuff is kept (lacquers, dyes and so on) knowing perfectly that it is hazardous.
Hypothetically, it can be assumed that in such circumstances a person is guided by the following principles:
1) a person underestimates disaster risk;
2) a person considers the established requirements erroneous or redundant;
3) a person supposes the situation is under control and there is no threat in whole;
4) a person may lack confidence in widespread stereotypes and norms;
5) a person regards his social position as exclusive and therefore obtains subjective reasons for ignoring common rules.
We believe testing this hypothesis is possible by means of social experiment. How can this behavioral model emerge from ongoing practice, in the situation of a fire? A typical example is the situation of a fire in a high-rise building when a person is willing to be evacuated and trying to be saved by the use of an elevator instead of using fire escape or a device for self-rescue of a person from a high-rise structure. In doing so, it is obvious to the person that his actions are dangerous and prohibited by fire protection requirements [5]. Correspondingly, such type of behavior could have following reasons:
1) a person presumes specified norms as wrong or excessive;
2) a person undervalues hazards of his usual activities or considers risks as exaggerated;
3) a person thinks that his case is special and not fitting into usual practice and estimates his own actions as the most acceptable in such circumstances. Although it is widely believed that in emergency situations a person acts spontaneously and by reflex the base of his behavior is stereotypes deeply rooted in conscience.
The second model. A person possesses knowledge about fire safety but unconsciously makes fatal mistakes in case of real danger. Such model of behavior can be observed during firefighting trainings held among target groups. For instance, workers of a construction company are given instructions about evacuation from underground passageways in case of fire with forthcoming testing and educational training. The testing reveals that instructing was provided successfully and workers obtained knowledge about necessary regulations.
However, the emergency training reveals that certain part of workers carries out serious hazardous actions inconsistent with the instructions. In case of a real fire this model of behavior could have the following conditions:
1) at the moment of emergency situations people often forget about rules and instructions and act by reflex;
2) when fire events are moving too fast and unpredictable people don't have enough time to sort out;
3) people are guided by the actions of other people being confident that they are acting correctly. Human panics or gives in to the panic of the others or, on the contrary, stays extremely calm in the situations when there are reasons to panic [6].
The third model. A person is knowledgable in fire protection but isn't guided by requirements experiencing circumstances of irresistible force. The range of such circumstances can be wide and diverse. It can be low income causing the use of cheap and fire-dangerous ways of heating home or the garbage utilization by the open-burning on the ground.
We should consider fire cases when a person has to take a risk ignoring rules and fire protection requirements to rescue close people, domestic animals or to pick up some documents, money, valuable things. Specifically, the situations should be noted when the circumstances of fire are atypical and person's knowledge is insufficient to cope with the situation.
At last the third task of social experiment in fire prevention is the evaluation of effectiveness of the preventive work accomplished. The result of the investigation reveals the level of knowledge and skills acquired by people during training and their ability to use them in practice. This information gives the opportunity to the organizers of preventive efforts to undertake work on errors, to adjust the methodology and content of promotion activities and training programs.
The methodology of the social experiment is specific and diverse. The selection of the definite algorithm depends on the issue and effective target of the investigation, study group features and laboratory conditions. The most available and efficient technique is the refinement of fire-hazard situations applying game forms with the involvement of control and experimental groups. For instance, the challenge before us is to study people's behavior in case of a fire in a movie theater. The relevance of the social experiment in this aspect has increased significantly after the fire in the shopping center "Winter Cherry" in Kemerovo where one of the causes of death toll was blocking emergency exits from the cinema hall [7]. It is necessary to reveal factors provoking misorientating and real scare during the process of evacuation. For achieving these objectives it is essential to form two groups of participants with similar social options - one of which will be control and the other will be experimental group. The experiment participants should behave as naturally as possible so the preliminary instruction isn't necessary. The control group is beginning the evacuation from the cinema hall after the fire alarm goes off. The experimenter doesn't have the right and purpose to interfere into the process and doesn't influence people's behavior, his main task is recording people's actions and relocation patterns inside and outside. The experimental group is facing additional impediments which in the situation of a real fire might be the cause of serious disorientation and panic. Thus, impediment could be one blocked exit or some of them or spread of artificial smoke (for greater impact). The task of the researcher is recording the alteration in people's actions and behavior after implementing experimental variable.
After this procedure the comparative analysis of the first and the second monitoring results is conducted and the conclusion confirms or denies the preliminary
hypothesis about the influence of experimental variable on people's behavior in a fire case.
The larger scale experiment assumes revealing participants with the most hazardous mistakes during the process of evacuation and provoking other participants for dangerous actions as well. Such cases should be incorporated into a special group for closer examination of the dangerous behavior reasons with the help of sociological and psychoanalytic approach. This approach helps reveal latent individual features of dangerous behavior for further improving the preventive measures. The individual reaction towards danger can depend on cultural, gender, age and physiological features of a person and may not fit in the common behavior model, seen in the group [8]. The wide range of data about the unique features of thinking and people's behavior in different fire risk situations enables to construct the imitating models of humans necessary for preventive measures elaborating. Such methods as Discrete Event Simulation and Agent-Based Simulation and also as an alternative, the hybrid of Discrete Event Simulation and Social Force Simulation can be used for this purpose [9].
It is important to note that fire evacuation is the most frequent subject of social experiment. The more elaborative method implies simulations where social and technogenic processes intersect within the bounds of a single experimental situation. The similar method is described in the work of Russian scientists "Experimental investigation of railway platform operators self-rescue in different periods of the year". In the study the medium speed of the operators' evacuation is compared to the medium speed of fire spreading during the spilling and burning of the petroleum products considering climate conditions [10].
The support tool of the social experiment can be sociological survey and testing. For instance, in the situation when the organization of laboratory experiment isn't possible or impended it is reasonable to make scenarios of experimental situations and include them in a sociological survey questionnaire. A respondent is offered to choose one behavioral model for each scenario which simulates real fire cases. However, it should be considered that the measurement error could be higher according to this approach compared with the realization of traditional experiment in observed and controlled circumstances.
A relevant example of such method effective implementation is the work of Aniskina Yu. A. and Samoshin D. A. aiming at verification of correlation between the start time of evacuation and fire-awareness training level of hospital staff [11]. In this study the key instrument of information gathering concerning the level of fire-awareness staff is sociological questionnaire.
The wide application of social experiment in fire prevention is being blocked by some obstacles.
First of all this is due to the absence in fire service regular departments specializing in sociological studies in the fire safety field. Working within a modest budget it is problematic to establish its own research units in State Fire Service. The involvement of external organizations could
help solve the problem if there were a choice of specialized research organizations. However, most sociological services work with the most popular standard topics and do not have research experience in the field of fire safety. It is important to understand that social experiment in the field of fire safety is a complex interdisciplinary field that requires a high level of competence from the researcher equally in sociological, socio-psychological and fire-technical issues.
Another difficulty is connected with organizational aspects. While making a social experiment in the area of fire safety the researcher is often limited in the abilities of manipulating study object and the experimental varying. First of all it depends on the ethical and judicial limits which forbid any moral, physical, psychological or material damage to be made to the participants of the experiment. It can be a real problem to reproduce situations similar to the conditions of a real fire in the process of the study. Secondly people knowing, that they are participating in an experiment can change their behavior model thus affecting the results of the experiment.
Certain difficulties can also appear as a result of incoherence between social and fire-technical elements preventing fires. Analyzing the studies with the use of
social experiment published in the fire issues over the last 3 years has shown that in the majority of cases the experiment results are used to improve the technical solutions in the area of fire safety. Thus, the emphasis is made on the technological component while the mentality and behavior of a human are understood as something less important. According to this research master plan the technical solutions in the area of fire strategy should be adapted to the studied human behavior models. However this strategy does not take into account how subjective, variable and situational the human behavior reaction actually is. Even the most effective technical solutions cannot make the behavior of a human in extreme situations more predictable. Therefore, it is obvious that the results of social experiment should be aimed at optimal behavior models forming and enable to orientate in different fire risk situations and at the same time be adaptive to new technical solutions.
Despite the expenses mentioned above a social experiment has a big practical importance in the field of fire safety for the results of the preventive measures will be gauged by saved human lives, undamaged possession and the lowered costs of fighting fires and eliminating their consequences.
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Материал поступил в редакцию 26 февраля 2021 года.
