February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The $2 million, three-year project is aimed at improving the design of skyscrapers, including methods of evacuation.
Researchers hope that by interviewing 9/11 survivors, they can establish the factors that improved or impeded their escape.
Project psychologists intend to use face-to-face interviews with survivors to build up detailed pictures of the evacuation in the Twin Towers and other parts of the WTC.
The study, which starts in September, will also examine structural
factors. Material will be assembled into the High-rise Evacuation Evaluation Database.
The project’s manager will be based at the University of Ulster’s campus at Jordanstown, just North of Belfast. Researchers from two English universities are also taking part.
Professor Ed Galea of the University of Greenwich in London, the chief researcher, has already looked at the role of staircase design in the disaster. He told the Engineer magazine, a UK publication, that more lives may have been saved if emergency staircases in the towers had not been grouped near each other.
“We are trying to learn lessons that will be highly relevant to building codes and standards, high-rise building design and evacuation procedures,” he said.