1,850 research outputs found
Cloud Enabled Emergency Navigation Using Faster-than-real-time Simulation
State-of-the-art emergency navigation approaches are designed to evacuate
civilians during a disaster based on real-time decisions using a pre-defined
algorithm and live sensory data. Hence, casualties caused by the poor decisions
and guidance are only apparent at the end of the evacuation process and cannot
then be remedied. Previous research shows that the performance of routing
algorithms for evacuation purposes are sensitive to the initial distribution of
evacuees, the occupancy levels, the type of disaster and its as well its
locations. Thus an algorithm that performs well in one scenario may achieve bad
results in another scenario. This problem is especially serious in
heuristic-based routing algorithms for evacuees where results are affected by
the choice of certain parameters. Therefore, this paper proposes a
simulation-based evacuee routing algorithm that optimises evacuation by making
use of the high computational power of cloud servers. Rather than guiding
evacuees with a predetermined routing algorithm, a robust Cognitive Packet
Network based algorithm is first evaluated via a cloud-based simulator in a
faster-than-real-time manner, and any "simulated casualties" are then re-routed
using a variant of Dijkstra's algorithm to obtain new safe paths for them to
exits. This approach can be iterated as long as corrective action is still
possible.Comment: Submitted to PerNEM'15 for revie
Information requirements for enterprise systems
In this paper, we discuss an approach to system requirements engineering, which is based on using models of the responsibilities assigned to agents in a multi-agency system of systems. The responsibility models serve as a basis for identifying the stakeholders that should be considered in establishing the requirements and provide a basis for a structured approach, described here, for information requirements elicitation. We illustrate this approach using a case study drawn from civil emergency management
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Distributed agent-based building evacuation simulator
The optimisation of the evacuation of a building plays a fundamental role in emergency situations. The behaviour of individuals, the directions that civilians receive, and the actions of the emergency personnel, will affect the success of the operation. We describe a simulation system that represents the individual, intelligent, and interacting agents that cooperate and compete while evacuating the building. The system also takes into account detailed information about the building and the sensory capabilities that it may contain. Since the level of detail represented in such a simulation can lead to computational needs that grow at least as a polynomial function of the number of the simulated agents, we propose an agent-oriented Distributed Building Evacuation Simulator (DBES). The DBES is integrated with a wireless sensor network which offers a closed loop representation of the evacuation procedure, including the sensed data and the emergency decision making
Crisis Communication Patterns in Social Media during Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy was one of the deadliest and costliest of hurricanes over the
past few decades. Many states experienced significant power outage, however
many people used social media to communicate while having limited or no access
to traditional information sources. In this study, we explored the evolution of
various communication patterns using machine learning techniques and determined
user concerns that emerged over the course of Hurricane Sandy. The original
data included ~52M tweets coming from ~13M users between October 14, 2012 and
November 12, 2012. We run topic model on ~763K tweets from top 4,029 most
frequent users who tweeted about Sandy at least 100 times. We identified 250
well-defined communication patterns based on perplexity. Conversations of most
frequent and relevant users indicate the evolution of numerous storm-phase
(warning, response, and recovery) specific topics. People were also concerned
about storm location and time, media coverage, and activities of political
leaders and celebrities. We also present each relevant keyword that contributed
to one particular pattern of user concerns. Such keywords would be particularly
meaningful in targeted information spreading and effective crisis communication
in similar major disasters. Each of these words can also be helpful for
efficient hash-tagging to reach target audience as needed via social media. The
pattern recognition approach of this study can be used in identifying real time
user needs in future crises
Reactive Rules for Emergency Management
The goal of the following survey on Event-Condition-Action (ECA) Rules is to come to a common understanding and intuition on this topic within EMILI. Thus it does not give an academic overview on Event-Condition-Action Rules which would be valuable for computer scientists only. Instead the survey tries to introduce Event-Condition-Action Rules and their use for emergency management based on real-life examples from the use-cases identified in Deliverable 3.1. In this way we hope to address both, computer scientists and security experts, by showing how the Event-Condition-Action Rule technology can help to solve security issues in emergency management. The survey incorporates information from other work packages, particularly from Deliverable D3.1 and its Annexes, D4.1, D2.1 and D6.2 wherever possible
Capacity Based Evacuation with Dynamic Exit Signs
Exit paths in buildings are designed to minimise evacuation time when the
building is at full capacity. We present an evacuation support system which
does this regardless of the number of evacuees. The core concept is to even-out
congestion in the building by diverting evacuees to less-congested paths in
order to make maximal usage of all accessible routes throughout the entire
evacuation process. The system issues a set of flow-optimal routes using a
capacity-constrained routing algorithm which anticipates evolutions in path
metrics using the concept of "future capacity reservation". In order to direct
evacuees in an intuitive manner whilst implementing the routing algorithm's
scheme, we use dynamic exit signs, i.e. whose pointing direction can be
controlled. To make this system practical and minimise reliance on sensors
during the evacuation, we use an evacuee mobility model and make several
assumptions on the characteristics of the evacuee flow. We validate this
concept using simulations, and show how the underpinning assumptions may limit
the system's performance, especially in low-headcount evacuations
MONALISA 2.0 and the sea traffic management - a concept creating the need for new maritime information standards and software solutions
Postprint (published version
Nuclear Plants and Emergency Virtual Simulations based on a Low-cost Engine Reuse
Our industrialised society comprises many industrial processes that are very important for everyone, in a wide range of fields. Activities related to these industrial processes, though, involve, in higher or lower degrees, some risk for personnel, besides risk for the general public in some cases. Therefore, efficient training programs and simulations are highly required, to improve the processes involved, increasing safety for people. To cite an example, nuclear plants pose high safety requirements in operational and maintenance routines, to keep plants in safe operation conditions and reduce personnel exposure to
radiation dose. Besides operational and maintenance in nuclear plants, there are also other situations where
efficient training is required, as in evacuation planning from buildings in emergency situations. Also, rescue tasks play similar role. These apply specially for nuclear sites. Another situation that requires efficient training is security, what has special meaning for plants that involve dangerous materials, such as nuclear plants. Nuclear materials must be kept under high security level, to avoid any misuse
Adoption of vehicular ad hoc networking protocols by networked robots
This paper focuses on the utilization of wireless networking in the robotics domain. Many researchers have already equipped their robots with wireless communication capabilities, stimulated by the observation that multi-robot systems tend to have several advantages over their single-robot counterparts. Typically, this integration of wireless communication is tackled in a quite pragmatic manner, only a few authors presented novel Robotic Ad Hoc Network (RANET) protocols that were designed specifically with robotic use cases in mind. This is in sharp contrast with the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). This observation is the starting point of this paper. If the results of previous efforts focusing on VANET protocols could be reused in the RANET domain, this could lead to rapid progress in the field of networked robots. To investigate this possibility, this paper provides a thorough overview of the related work in the domain of robotic and vehicular ad hoc networks. Based on this information, an exhaustive list of requirements is defined for both types. It is concluded that the most significant difference lies in the fact that VANET protocols are oriented towards low throughput messaging, while RANET protocols have to support high throughput media streaming as well. Although not always with equal importance, all other defined requirements are valid for both protocols. This leads to the conclusion that cross-fertilization between them is an appealing approach for future RANET research. To support such developments, this paper concludes with the definition of an appropriate working plan
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