BALTIMORE — Do people react differently to a fire in a kitchen versus one in a bedroom? That's the kind of question a Morgan State professor hopes to answer, with the goal of improving home fire safety.
With the help of a $596,383 grant from the National Science Foundation - the first of its kind for an HBCU (historically black college or university) - Morgan State University will recruit participants to react and make decisions based on software-simulated building fires.
The study, led by psychology professor Justin Bonny, will research how people react to fires in different situations and settings. It will also create "a virtual room of fire simulations forming an exclusive fire research portfolio of human behavior" at Morgan.
Bonny said in a statement:
"We are applying this to fires to better understand how the same developing fire occurring in say, for example, a kitchen may be perceived differently than in a bedroom. This allows us to investigate how different properties of developing fires are connected to perception and decision-making... My goal is for this project to help position Morgan State to be a research hub in the field of human behavior in fire."
The research findings will be used to improve fire safety systems, especially in the home.
Bonny will be working with James Milke, chair of the University of Maryland's Department of Fire Protection Engineering, and a grad student research assistant.
