Project Safe EV-AC

Project Safe EV-AC, a three year development project, will improve evacuation from buildings, vehicles, and other settings during emergencies by providing training materials on the EVacuation and ACcommodation of people with disabilities. With your participation, Project Safe EV-AC materials will be Sound, Accessible, Free, and Effective. Project Safe EV-AC is targeting specific audiences, including people with disabilities and emergency responders. Download a Project Safe EV-AC brochure. If you would like a free brochure, contact Project Safe EV-AC.

Visit the Project Safe EV-AC Library.

Our mission: Awareness of and familiarity with your organization's evacuation plan is essential in order to increase people's safety in emergency situations. In the case of emergency evacuation, this is not enough, and additional steps must include overcoming the tendency to avoid thinking about emergencies and getting adequate information about emergency evacuation planning. These two problems must be overcome.

First, people must overcome the fear and anxiety caused by emergency planning. People tend to avoid thinking about the possibility of an emergency occurring because such thoughts lead to avoidance thinking. For this reason, people often fail to develop emergency evacuation plans. Currently, there is no effective training process for addressing this problem.

Second, people have difficulty sorting through the voluminous amount of emergency evacuation material and applying it efficiently. Coordination among agencies in providing training materials is nonexistent. Many agencies distribute guides on emergency evacuation; however, most do not integrate materials from other agencies in a way that provides the "best of the best." Currently, there is no cohesive set of safe evacuation "best" practices that includes people with disabilities.

Project Safe EV-AC will address these problems by 1) developing an effective training program for overcoming avoidance behavior and, 2) integrating available best safety evacuation practices into easy-to-use training materials.

In addition, Project Safe EV-AC will include a continuous feedback process to ensure that quality materials are developed. This process has two stages. During the second year of the Project, safety evacuation experts will be asked to serve on the Project's Advisory Panel. This panel will review current best practices and assist with the integration of these practices. In the third year of the Project, a panel of end-users (employer, building owner, nursing home owner, etc.) will review the newly developed materials to ensure that the materials are relevant and easy to use.

If you are an expert in the field of safety evacuation or an end-user of safety emergency evacuation for people with disabilities, and would like to serve on one of these panels please contact Project Safe EV-AC.