EMERGENCY EGRESS SYSTEMS

Human Factors Involved in Emergency Egress Systems

Human Factors Involved in Emergency Egress Systems

Introduction

Our world is filled with thousands of devices, tools, machines and products which when assembled into functional units form systems. By definition a system is a set of elements developed to achieve an objective. A well designed system considers the relations amongst the elements and the boundaries around the elements to provide for the proper considerations of the interaction of the elements to the overall objective. Generally systems have a characterized input, process and output (Vincente, 2003).

In terms of the design, operation and control, systems range from very simple to very complex. In many industrial sectors, these systems can range in kind from manual to mechanical to finally automatic. In order for these systems to achieve their optimal level of performance they should at sometime interface with humans and therefore the human becomes an important element in the total system. Many people would contend that the human may be the most significant element in the system and that the system should “fit the task to the human”. Fitting the task to the human is a phrase first presented by Grandjean in 1981. The process of considering the job of fitting the task to the human recounts the research of Human Factors and is furthermore renowned as Ergonomics. At smallest from my perspective the terms Human Factors and Ergonomics are interchangeable and for the balance of this paper will use the term Human Factors to avoid any confusion to the reader (Reilly, 2005).

Discussion and Analysis

Human Factors usually considers the three foremost elements of a system to be the Human, Machine(s) and the Environment. The Human-Machine-Environment (HME) approach considers the work and system conceive as a convoluted interaction of individual elements of the system and the more significantly the interaction of the elements inside the system. For demonstration, if you were to investigate your present situation as you are reading this research or your current workplace, and I were to inquire you to list a number of components or factors in the HME system, you might start with a register alike to the entries presented in Table 1. Take a moment look around your particular area and expand this list (Brooks, 1997).

Notice that research have focused on mostly physical elements of all three components; it is significant to furthermore consider cognitive function and other characteristics of these elements equally. Looking at this register identify those elements that have some stage of variability for example, the age range may be from 20 to 50+ years, the temperature in a standard classroom can vary from 18 to 25°C (or greater) and can add other values for numerous of the items listed. The last part of this exercise is to link elements in one column to elements in the other column(s).

Proper design for the human will achieve the optimal match between the human and the task(s) which should increase the system productivity and advance overall health and ...