Multi-agent simulations for emergency situations in an airport scenario

This paper presents a multi-agent framework using Net- Logo to simulate humanand collective behaviors during emergency evacuations. Emergency situationappears when an unexpected event occurs. In indoor emergency situation, evacuation plans defined by facility manager explain procedure and safety ways tofollow in an emergency situation. A critical and public scenario is an airportwhere there is an everyday transit of thousands of people. In this scenario theimportance is related with incidents statistics regarding overcrowding andcrushing in public buildings. Simulation has the objective of evaluating buildinglayouts considering several possible configurations. Agents could be based onreactive behavior like avoid danger or follow other agent, or in deliberative behaviorbased on BDI model. This tool provides decision support in a real emergencyscenario like an airport, analyzing alternative solutions to the evacuationprocess.Publicad

Toward cognitive digital twins using a BIM-GIS asset management system for a diffused university

The integrated use of building information modeling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) is promising for the development of asset management systems (AMSs) for operation and maintenance (O & M) in smart university campuses. The combination of BIM-GIS with cognitive digital twins (CDTs) can further facilitate the management of complex systems such as university building stock. CDTs enable buildings to behave as autonomous entities, dynamically reacting to environmental changes. Timely decisions based on the actual conditions of buildings and surroundings can be provided, both in emergency scenarios or when optimized and adaptive performances are required. The research aims to develop a BIM-GIS-based AMS for improving user experience and enabling the optimal use of resources in the O & M phase of an Italian university. Campuses are complex assets, mainly diffused with buildings spread across the territory, managed with still document-based and fragmented databases handled by several subjects. This results in incomplete and asymmetrical information, often leading to ineffective and untimely decisions. The paper presents a methodology for the development of a BIM-GIS web-based platform (i.e., AMS-app) providing the real-time visualization of the asset in an interactive 3D map connected to analytical dashboards for management support. Two buildings of the University of Turin are adopted as demonstrators, illustrating the development of an easily accessible, centralized database by integrating spatial and functional data, useful also to develop future CDTs. As a first attempt to show the AMS app potential, crowd simulations have been conducted to understand the buildings' actual level of safety in case of fire emergency and demonstrate how CDTs could improve it. The identification of data needed, also gathered through the future implementation of suitable sensors and Internet of Things networks, is the core issue together with the definition of effective asset visualization and monitoring methods. Future developments will explore the integration of artificial intelligence and immersive technologies to enable space use optimization and real-time wayfinding during evacuation, exploiting digital tools to alert and drive users or authorities for safety improvement. The ability to easily optimize the paths with respect to the actual occupancy and conditions of both the asset and surroundings will be enabled

Intelligent evacuation management systems: A review

Crowd and evacuation management have been active areas of research and study in the recent past. Various developments continue to take place in the process of efficient evacuation of crowds in mass gatherings. This article is intended to provide a review of intelligent evacuation management systems covering the aspects of crowd monitoring, crowd disaster prediction, evacuation modelling, and evacuation path guidelines. Soft computing approaches play a vital role in the design and deployment of intelligent evacuation applications pertaining to crowd control management. While the review deals with video and nonvideo based aspects of crowd monitoring and crowd disaster prediction, evacuation techniques are reviewed via the theme of soft computing, along with a brief review on the evacuation navigation path. We believe that this review will assist researchers in developing reliable automated evacuation systems that will help in ensuring the safety of the evacuees especially during emergency evacuation scenarios

Multimodal-Transport Collaborative Evacuation Strategies for Urban Serious Emergency Incidents Based on Multi-Sources Spatiotemporal Data (Short Paper)

When serious emergency events happen in metropolitan cities where pedestrians and vehicles are in high-density, single modal-transport cannot meet the requirements of quick evacuations. Existing mixed modes of transportation lacks spatiotemporal collaborative ability, which cannot work together to accomplish evacuation tasks in a safe and efficient way. It is of great scientific significance and application value for emergency response to adopt multimodal-transport evacuations and improve their spatial-temporal collaboration ability. However, multimodal-transport evacuation strategies for urban serious emergency event are great challenge to be solved. The reasons lie in that: (1) large-scale urban emergency environment are extremely complicated involving many geographical elements (e.g., road, buildings, over-pass, square, hydrographic net, etc.); (2) Evacuated objects are dynamic and hard to be predicted. (3) the distributions of pedestrians and vehicles are unknown. To such issues, this paper reveals both collaborative and competitive mechanisms of multimodal-transport, and further makes global optimal evacuation strategies from the macro-optimization perspective. Considering detailed geographical environment, pedestrian, vehicle and urban rail transit, a multi-objective multi-dynamic-constraints optimization model for multimodal-transport collaborative emergency evacuation is constructed. Take crowd incidents in Shenzhen as example, empirical experiments with real-world data are conducted to evaluate the evacuation strategies and path planning. It is expected to obtain innovative research achievements on theory and method of urban emergency evacuation in serious emergency events. Moreover, this research results provide spatial-temporal decision support for urban emergency response, which is benefit to constructing smart and safe cities

Multiagent Simulations for Emergency Situations in Buildings

Proceedings of: 13th Ibero-American Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IBERAMIA 2012): Workshop on Intelligent systems for context-based information fusion (ISCIF). Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. 13-16 November 2012.This paper presents a multi-agent framework using NetLogo to simulate human and collective behaviors during emergency evacuations. Emergency situation appears when an unexpected event occurs. In indoor emergency situation, evacuation plans de ned by facility manager explain procedure and safety ways to follow in an emergency situation. Critical and public scenarios are buildings where there is an everyday transit of thousands of people. In this case the importance is related with incidents statistics regarding overcrowding and crushing in public buildings. Simulation has the objective of evaluating building layouts considering several possible con gurations. Agents could be based on reactive behavior like avoid danger or follow other agent, or in deliberative behavior based on BDI model. This tool provides decision support in a real emergency scenario like an public buildings, analyzing alternative solutions to the evacuation process.Publicad

Passenger Flows in Underground Railway Stations and Platforms, MTI Report 12-43

Urban rail systems are designed to carry large volumes of people into and out of major activity centers. As a result, the stations at these major activity centers are often crowded with boarding and alighting passengers, resulting in passenger inconvenience, delays, and at times danger. This study examines the planning and analysis of station passenger queuing and flows to offer rail transit station designers and transit system operators guidance on how to best accommodate and manage their rail passengers. The objectives of the study are to: 1) Understand the particular infrastructural, operational, behavioral, and spatial factors that affect and may constrain passenger queuing and flows in different types of rail transit stations; 2) Identify, compare, and evaluate practices for efficient, expedient, and safe passenger flows in different types of station environments and during typical (rush hour) and atypical (evacuations, station maintenance/ refurbishment) situations; and 3) Compile short-, medium-, and long-term recommendations for optimizing passenger flows in different station environments