Determination of service levels for passenger orientation in Hong Kong International Airport

Passenger orientation (wayfinding) is one of the importance factors for the layout design of airport passenger terminal. It is common that some people have difficulties in locating their destinations in spite of availability of information signs. This paper describes the use of a quantitative measure, visibility index (VI), to evaluate the ease of locating various airport passenger/visitor facilities in the Departures Level of Hong Kong International Airport. A new set of level-of-service (LOS) standards for orientation has been proposed based on the visibility indices of the terminal facilities. The comparison results show that the newly proposed standards are similar to those suggested in a pervious study. By matching the weight of the facilities and their corresponding VI, terminal facilities require wayfinding improvement were identified. It is believed that the VI and proposed LOS standards can be used as criteria for design and improvement of airport terminal layout and wayfinding aids. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.