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Smoke Alarms and the Human Response

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Residential Fire Safety

Part of the book series: The Society of Fire Protection Engineers Series ((SFPES))

Abstract

Smoke alarms are mandated in all man-made structures designed for human occupancy in most developed nations, and as such, they have become a normal and expected feature of our environment. Most people understand that their purpose is to alert building occupants to the possibility of fire. Despite this, it is wrong to assume that when a smoke alarm sounds the human response will be uniformly predictable. There are many different factors influencing whether or not a person will respond to an alarm, and these vary depending upon whether a person is awake or asleep, and audibility factors within the environment. This chapter will begin with a brief history of smoke alarm use and design and then proceed to a review of recent literature on human response to the smoke alarm signal when people are asleep, and when they are awake.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Health and Sport, Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Michelle Ball & Kara Dadswell

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  1. Michelle Ball
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  2. Kara Dadswell
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Correspondence to Michelle Ball .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Fire Safety Engineering, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Marcus Runefors

  2. Risk and Environmental Studies, Centre for Societal Risk Research, Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden

    Ragnar Andersson

  3. The Swedish Fire Research Foundation (Brandforsk), Stockholm, Sweden

    Mattias Delin

  4. Division of Fire Safety Engineering, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Thomas Gell

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Ball, M., Dadswell, K. (2023). Smoke Alarms and the Human Response. In: Runefors, M., Andersson, R., Delin, M., Gell, T. (eds) Residential Fire Safety. The Society of Fire Protection Engineers Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06325-1_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06325-1_8

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