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Human-Building Interaction (HBI) is a convergent field that represents the growing complexities of the dynamic interplay between human experience and intelligence within built environments. This paper provides core definitions, research dimensions, and an overall vision for the future of HBI as developed through consensus among 25 interdisciplinary experts in a series of facilitated workshops. Three primary areas contribute to and require attention in HBI research: humans (human experiences, performance, and well-being), buildings (building design and operations), and technologies (sensing, inference, and awareness). Three critical interdisciplinary research domains intersect these areas: control systems and decision making, trust and collaboration, and modeling and simulation. Finally, at the core, it is vital for HBI research to center on and support equity, privacy, and sustainability. Compelling research questions are posed for each primary area, research domain, and core principle. State-of-the-art methods used in HBI studies are discussed, and examples of original research are offered to illustrate opportunities for the advancement of HBI research., Scientific Reports, 12 (1), ISSN:2045-2322

Active shooter incidents represent an increasing threat to American society, especially in commercial and educational buildings. In recent years, a wide variety of security countermeasures have been recommended by public and governmental agencies. Many of these countermeasures are aimed to increase building security, yet their impact on human behavior when an active shooter incident occurs remains underexplored. To fill this research gap, we conducted virtual experiments to evaluate the impact of countermeasures on human behavior during active shooter incidents. A total of 162 office workers and middle/high school teachers were recruited to respond to an active shooter incident in virtual office and school buildings with or without the implementation of multiple countermeasures. The experiment results showed countermeasures significantly influenced participants’ response time and decisions (e.g., run, hide, fight). Participants’ responses and perceptions of the active shooter incident were also contingent on their daily roles, as well as building and social contexts. Teachers had more concerns for occupants’ safety than office workers. Moreover, teachers had more positive perceptions of occupants in the school, whereas office workers had more positive perceptions of occupants in the office.

Lacking a holistic framework for analyzing risk factors would result in the inaccurate assessment of safety performance and poor safety management. This research aims to establish a Bayesian-network (BN)-HFACS hybrid model to proactively predict safety performance in construction projects. First, a causation framework for analyzing the underlying factors influencing construction safety performance was established using the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS). This causation framework incorporates 18 risk factors from organizational, environmental and human aspects that are categorized into five levels: L1: “unsafe acts of workers,” L2: “preconditions for unsafe acts,” L3: “unsafe supervision and monitoring,” L4: “adverse organizational influences,” and L5: “adverse environmental influences.” The relationships between these factors and project safety performance were then hypothesized in the BN-HFACS model, and validated by data collected with questionnaires. The proposed model was applied to a subway project with AgenaRisk software. This application demonstrated the model’s capabilities in systematically identifying risk factors, predicting the probabilities of safety states in project level and in the five specific cause levels, and diagnosing the most sensitive risk factor. This research contributes to safety assessment and management by modifying the original HFACS for the causation analysis of construction safety performance, and by establishing a BN model for quantifying the total influences of the risk factors at five distinct levels on project safety performance. The integration of HFACS and BNs may be instructive in other contexts where diverse safety risk factors are involved in a system and safety prediction of the system is necessary.

Unfortunately, active shooter incidents are on the rise in the United States. With the recent technological advancements, virtual reality (VR) experiments could serve as an effective method to prepare civilians and law enforcement personnel for such scenarios. However, for VR experiments to be effective for active shooter training and research, such experiments must be able to evoke emotional and physiological responses as live active shooter drills and events do. The objective of this study is thus to test the effectiveness of an active shooter VR experiment on emotional and physiological responses. Additionally, we consider different locomotion techniques (i.e., walk-in-place and controller) and explore their impact on users’ sense of presence. The results suggest that the VR active shooter experiment in this study can induce emotional arousal and increase heart rate of the participants immersed in the virtual environment. Furthermore, compared to the controller, the walk-in-place technique resulted in a higher emotional arousal in terms of negative emotions and a stronger sense of presence. The study presents a foundation for future active shooter experiments as it supports the ecological validity using VR for active shooter incident related work for the purposes of training or research.

Active shooter incidents present an increasing threat to the American society. Many of these incidents occur in building environments, therefore, it is important to consider design and security elements in buildings to decrease the risk of active shooter incidents. This study aims to assess current security countermeasures and identify varying considerations associated with implementing these countermeasures. Fifteen participants, with expertise and experience in a diverse collection of operational and organizational backgrounds, including security, engineering, law enforcement, emergency management and policy making, participated in three focus group interviews. The participants identified a list of countermeasures that have been used for active shooter incidents. Important determinants for the effectiveness of countermeasures include their influence on occupants' behavior during active shooter incidents, and occupants' and administrators' awareness of how to use them effectively. The nature of incidents (e.g., internal vs. external threats), building type (e.g., office buildings vs. school buildings), and occupants (e.g., students of different ages) were also recognized to affect the selection of appropriate countermeasures. The nexus between emergency preparedness and normal operations, and the importance of tradeoffs such as the ones between cost, aesthetics, maintenance needs and the influence on occupants' daily activities were also discussed. To ensure the effectiveness of countermeasures and improve safety, the participants highlighted the importance of both training and practice, for occupants and administrators (e.g., first responder teams). The interview results suggested that further study of the relationship between security countermeasures and occupants' and administrators’ responses, as well as efficient training approaches are needed.

Human behavior is fundamental to human safety and the outcomes of building emergencies. It is correlated with social environments, building environments and emergency situations. This study presents a review about human-human interactions (i.e., interactions among people or groups of people and their influence on behavior during emergencies), human-building interactions (i.e., how buildings influence human behavior and how human behavior impacts the building performance during emergencies), human-emergency interactions (i.e., how emergency situations impact human behavior and people’s coping strategies with emergencies), and second-order interactions among humans, buildings, and emergencies. The review reveals that while various human-human interactions among building occupants have been investigated, some of them (e.g., grouping behavior, information sharing) are less understood, and the interactions between building occupants and staff members need further explorations. With regard to human-building interactions, prior studies have been limited to certain types of buildings and building attributes, while the aggregate impact of a combination of building attributes should be more studied. Moreover, building fires were the most frequently examined emergency type, while other types of emergencies, such as earthquakes and acts of extreme violence, received less attention. Additionally, second-order interactions among humans, buildings and emergencies have not been widely studied. This paper also puts forward recommendations for future research, including validating prior findings when transforming them into real-world applications, leveraging the strength of different data collection and interpretation methods, as well as collaborating more closely with researchers and practitioners in related areas.

This study examines the effects of architectural visual access on people's wayfinding behavior and evacuation performance during building emergencies using virtual reality. Fire evacuation experiments were conducted in an immersive virtual metro station, which was based on a real metro station in Beijing, China. A total of 226 participants, positioned among evenly or unevenly distributed crowd, were asked to evacuate the station that was designed with low or high visual access, manipulated through building design features (e.g., changing wall materials, removing columns in hallways). Crowd was presented in the virtual metro station by incorporating non-player characters assigned to different evacuation routes. To explore the possible influence of cultural background on participants' wayfinding behavior, experiments were conducted in London, Beijing, and Los Angeles. The results showed that improving architectural visual access could improve participants' virtual evacuation performance during emergencies; it could also influence participants' directional choices during evacuation, depending on the design strategy used and the spatial characteristics of the building. In addition, participants' tendency of following the crowd was reduced when there was an alternative route with high architectural visual access.

This study aimed to examine the influence of crowd flow on human evacuation behavior during building fire emergencies, when evacuees perceive high uncertainty in the environment and experience mental stress. Evacuation experiments were conducted in an immersive virtual metro station, in which each participant was presented with one of three different patterns of crowd flow and asked to complete an evacuation task. The patterns of crowd flow were represented by non-player characters that split differently at each wayfinding decision point in the metro station. The experiments were conducted in Beijing, Los Angeles and London. The results showed that uneven splits of crowd flow motivated participants under mental stress to follow the majority of the crowd. This influence of crowd flow was generally consistent over the course of evacuation, and such consistency could be reinforced by stronger directional information conveyed by the crowd flow as well as positive feedback from the outcomes of previous wayfinding decisions. The results also indicated that the influence of crowd flow was significant in all three cultures represented by the three cities, however, the impact of culture on how participants would respond to the directional information conveyed by the crowd flow was insignificant.