معرفی
Dr. Karen Boyce serves as Senior Lecturer at Ulster University's Belfast School of Architecture & the Built Environment within the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment. With over 30 years of continuous research at FireSERT (Fire Safety Engineering Research and Technology Centre), she specializes in human behaviour during fire evacuations, particularly focusing on vulnerable populations including people with disabilities and elderly occupants.
- PhD in Fire Safety Engineering (1997), Thesis: "Towards the Characterisation of Disabled Persons for Evacuation"
- BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science (1984), Queen's University Belfast
Her research program integrates experimental fire safety engineering with pedestrian dynamics, examining occupant movement through motion capture studies, funnel-shaped bottleneck analyses, and biomechanical measurements. Key contributions include an EPSRC-funded investigation of World Trade Centre evacuations on 9/11 and development of engineering data for the Society of Fire Protection Engineers Handbook. She has published over 60 research papers addressing evacuation modeling for diverse populations.
Analysis of her 2019-2024 publications reveals accelerating focus on microscopic crowd flow modeling, with increasing emphasis on experimental biomechanics and cognitive components of pedestrian movement. Recent work quantifies stop/start processes in pedestrian traffic and examines demographic impacts on evacuation performance, reflecting growing urgency in adapting fire safety standards for aging populations and reduced mobility groups.
Dr. Boyce holds significant leadership positions including Chair of the Programme Committee for the International Symposium Human Behaviour in Fire series and membership on editorial boards for Fire Science Reviews and Case Studies in Fire Safety. She serves on the Advisory Board of Fire and Materials and previously co-chaired the Planning Committee for the 12th International Association of Fire Safety Science Symposium (2017).
As Principal Investigator for the "Means of Escape for Disabled People" project (2020-2023) and contributor to the HARMONISE infrastructure security initiative (2013-2019), she bridges academic research with regulatory impact. Her external roles include membership on the Northern Ireland Building Regulations Advisory Committee (NIBRAC) Part E technical sub-committee and External Examiner position at Glasgow Caledonian University since 2014.
