IMPROVING VOICE ALARM IN EMERGENCY EVACUATION: OPTIMIZING ACOUSTIC AND SEMANTIC PARAMETERS FOR HIGHER PERCEIVED URGENCY

摘要

Voice alarm is important in emergency evacuation, and designed to inform occupants what happened and what to do, as well as to urge them to take effective and rational action. This research investigated both acoustic and semantic factors which impact on the perceived urgency of voice alarm in emergency evacuation. The repeated measure ANOVA showed a significant main effect of speaking rate, noise level, SNR. The faster and more loudly the signals are spoken, the more urgent they are rated. Alarms are rated more urgent under noise level of 70 dB (A) than 50dB (A). The ANOVA also indicates one significant interaction effects between gender of speaker and speaking rate.