Exit Design Standards from Mice?

Recent research by a group of scientists from the National Institute of Physics in U.P. Diliman studied the behavior of mice in panic situations. According to their study, mice formed a queue and made an orderly escape when faced with a narrow door, while wider doors caused the rodents to block one another.

The research, entitled “Self-organized queuing and scale-free behavior in real escape panic” was published in two international publications, The New Scientist and Nature. This is the first time that an all-Filipino group of scientists based in the Philippines were covered by both of these journals.

Director Caesar Saloma of NIP who was involved in the research said in an interview in the New Scientist that he hoped their study will “help design buildings and escape routes that induce people to queue and delay jamming. It is not enough to increase the size and number of doors, as it may have the opposite of the desired effect.”

Panic experiments are difficult to do with humans because of ethical and legal considerations. Rodents are useful because mammals exhibit and share similar behavioral traits and capacities.

The scientists based their observations on a series of experiments using 60 mice trying to escape a water pool. Mice have a strong aversion to water. In the New Scientist interview, Saloma said “the most efficient escape (of the mice) was when the door size was only large enough for one mouse to squeeze through, as it promoted self-organized queuing. However, as soon as the door width was increased, the mice stopped lining up and competed with each other, which slowed down the overall escape rate.” If the escape doors were positioned too close together, the mice which clustered around exits interfered with each other, slowing each other down.

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Condensed from “ Fleeing mice likened to stampeding humans” an article in UPdate Diliman, August-October 2003. Image taken from Nature. Here's the New Scientist article featuring the research.