Last Updated: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 Guylène Proulx: 1960 - 2009 Updated: Friday, December 18, 2009 Guylène Proulx, an international giant in fire and crowd safety research. Photo: No attribution The international fire and crowd safety community has lost a giant in human behavior research. Guylène Proulx, PhD, 48, a senior researcher at the National Research Council Canada passed away on December 1, after a short illness. Dr. Proulx was recognized for her excellent and insightful research on how people actually react in fire emergencies. She often threw cold water on crowd "engineers" and architects who ignored the role psychology and behavior play in emergency evacuation planning and management. Dr. Proulx was among those---including Crowd Management Strategies---that challenged the often misapplied concepts of panic and stampede during emergency egress situations. Dr. Proulx was forceful in her argument on this topic. In "Human Behaviour - How efficient are modeling systems?" she argued: "The notion that people caught in a fire will panic and stampede has long been rejected by psychologists. Panic has rarely been observed as a human response to danger from fire. In fact, most people appear to apply rational decision-making relative to their understanding of the event at the time of a fire." During Dr. Proulx's career, her ideas and research crossed many borders. As a result, she served on fire safety standards making organizations outside of Canada. Dr. Proulx's curiosity drew her to investigate many high profile incidents from the 1985 Bradford stadum fire in England to the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, and everything in between. Dr. Proulx always wanted to know the "why, when and how" of human behavior in emergencies. She fought hard and successfully against misconceptions about how people act at the start and during fire emergencies. Dr. Proulx pleaded with colleagues and educators that more had to be done to protect the public from the dangers of smoke during fires. Public misconceptions about smoke, she argued, had often made fires at public places more tragic in terms of lives lost. Dr. Proulx was passionate about her fire safety work, as are so many people who dedicate their professional careers, if not lives, to the mission of public safety. "I truly believe that this kind of work can save lives," she told a CBC reporter in 2000. And then, with unshakable confidence Dr. Proulx added: "That's why I do it." In remembrance to Guylène Proulx, donations can be made to the Canadian Cancer Society. [ home ][ crowdcafe ][ new ][ crowdshop ][ contact ] Crowd Management Strategies © 1997 - 2006. All rights reserved. Crowdsafe is a registered trademark of Crowd Management Strategies © 2006.