870 research outputs found
A Cooperative Emergency Navigation Framework using Mobile Cloud Computing
The use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for emergency navigation systems
suffer disadvantages such as limited computing capacity, restricted battery
power and high likelihood of malfunction due to the harsh physical environment.
By making use of the powerful sensing ability of smart phones, this paper
presents a cloud-enabled emergency navigation framework to guide evacuees in a
coordinated manner and improve the reliability and resilience in both
communication and localization. By using social potential fields (SPF),
evacuees form clusters during an evacuation process and are directed to
egresses with the aid of a Cognitive Packet Networks (CPN) based algorithm.
Rather than just rely on the conventional telecommunications infrastructures,
we suggest an Ad hoc Cognitive Packet Network (AHCPN) based protocol to prolong
the life time of smart phones, that adaptively searches optimal communication
routes between portable devices and the egress node that provides access to a
cloud server with respect to the remaining battery power of smart phones and
the time latency.Comment: This document contains 8 pages and 3 figures and has been accepted by
ISCIS 2014 (29th International Symposium on Computer and Information
Sciences
Personalized Alert Notifications and Evacuation Routes in Indoor Environments
The preparedness phase is crucial in the emergency management process for reaching an adequate level of readiness to react to potential threats and hazards. During this phase, emergency plans are developed to establish, among other procedures, evacuation and emergency escape routes. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can support and improve these procedures providing appropriate, updated and accessible information to all people in the affected zone. Current emergency management and evacuation systems do not adapt information to the context and the profile of each person, so messages received in the emergency might be useless. In this paper, we propose a set of criteria that ICT-based systems could achieve in order to avoid this problem adapting emergency alerts and evacuation routes to different situations and people. Moreover, in order to prove the applicability of such criteria, we define a mechanism that can be used as a complement of traditional evacuation systems to provide personalized alerts and evacuation routes to all kinds of people during emergency situations in working places. This mechanism is composed by three main components: CAP-ONES for notifying emergency alerts, NERES for defining emergency plans and generating personalized evacuation routes, and iNeres as the interface to receive and visualize these routes on smartphones. The usability and understandability of proposed interface has been assessed through a user study performed in a fire simulation in an indoor environment. This evaluation demonstrated that users considered iNeres easy to understand, to learn and to use, and they also found very innovative the idea to use smartphones as a support for escaping instead of static signals on walls and doors
Indoor Localization for Fire Safety : A brief overview of fundamentals, needs and requirements and applications
An indoor localization system for positioning evacuating people can be anticipated to increase the chances of a safe evacuation and effective rescue intervention in case of a tunnel fire. Such a system may utilize prevalent wireless technologies, e.g., Bluetooth, RFID and Wi-Fi, which today are used to survey incoming and outgoing traffic to a certain space or location, to estimate group sizes and to measure the duration of visits during normal operation of buildings. Examples also exist of where the same wireless technologies are used for safety purposes, for example to assess real-time location, tracking and monitoring of vehicles, personnel and equipment in mining environments. However, they are relatively few, and typically rely on a high degree of control over the people that are to be tracked, and their association with (connection to) the localization system used for the tracking. In this report, the results of a brief overview of the literature within the field of indoor localization in general, and the application of indoor localization systems within the field of particularly fire safety, is summarized. This information forms the underlying basis for the planning and execution of a future field study, in which an indoor Wi-Fi localization system will be tested and evaluated in terms of if, and if so how, it can be used to position evacuating people in tunnels. Whereas such a system allows digital footprints to be collected within a wireless network infrastructure (also already existing ones), questions remains to be answered regarding aspects such as precision and accuracy, and furthermore, how these aspects are affected by other independent variables. In the end of this report, examples of research questions deemed necessary to answer in order to enable a sound evaluation of the system is presented. These need to be addressed in the future planning of the above-mentioned field study
Fireground location understanding by semantic linking of visual objects and building information models
This paper presents an outline for improved localization and situational awareness in fire emergency situations based on semantic technology and computer vision techniques. The novelty of our methodology lies in the semantic linking of video object recognition results from visual and thermal cameras with Building Information Models (BIM). The current limitations and possibilities of certain building information streams in the context of fire safety or fire incident management are addressed in this paper. Furthermore, our data management tools match higher-level semantic metadata descriptors of BIM and deep-learning based visual object recognition and classification networks. Based on these matches, estimations can be generated of camera, objects and event positions in the BIM model, transforming it from a static source of information into a rich, dynamic data provider. Previous work has already investigated the possibilities to link BIM and low-cost point sensors for fireground understanding, but these approaches did not take into account the benefits of video analysis and recent developments in semantics and feature learning research. Finally, the strengths of the proposed approach compared to the state-of-the-art is its (semi -)automatic workflow, generic and modular setup and multi-modal strategy, which allows to automatically create situational awareness, to improve localization and to facilitate the overall fire understanding
Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)
This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio
A Real-time Decision Support with Cloud Computing Based Fire Evacuation System
[[abstract]]An effective evacuation system can help people escape from building fire. Most evacuation systems consist of a indoor positioning system, a back-end database, and a display device with calculation and display software. However, very few of them can smartly determine which evacuation route is the best decision. If all the locations of the evacuating people can be simultaneously determined, the best evacuation routes can be decided to avoid congestion, and survival rate can increase. The previous radio frequency identification (RFID) based evacuation system focused on detecting the RFID tags using a mobile phone in order to determine the location of the mobile phone user so that an evacuation route can be displayed. However, the system is available for one person regardless of the number of evacuating people or exits. This study is based on the previous RFID based evacuation system investigating the best evacuation routes. The system introduces cloud computing that calculates for positioning the evacuating people and determining the optimum evacuation routes for each of them. The system will be implemented at Tamkang University on Lanyang campus.[[notice]]補正完畢[[conferencetype]]國際[[conferencedate]]20111024~20111026[[booktype]]紙本;電子版[[iscallforpapers]]Y[[conferencelocation]]Macao[[countrycodes]]MA
An Integrated Building Fire Evacuation System with RFID and Cloud Computing
[[abstract]]Building fire is a common disaster happening in our daily life that causes unfortunate casualties and deaths. Successfully escaping from fire depends on the design of evacuation route and time, as most of the damage of fire is caused due to lack of evacuation equipments or poor design of the emergency route. In this research work, we designed a hybrid building fire evacuation system (HBFES) on a mobile phone using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) techniques and Cloud Computing. The system will be implemented at Tamkang University on Lanyang campus. Several existing computer or mobile phone applications, namely Viewpoint Calculator, Path planner, and MobiX3D viewer will be used on the system to rapidly calculate reliable evacuation routes when building fire takes place.[[notice]]補正完畢[[conferencetype]]國際[[conferencedate]]20111014~10111016[[ispeerreviewed]]Y[[booktype]]紙本
電子版[[iscallforpapers]]Y[[conferencelocation]]Dalian, China[[countrycodes]]CH
Augmented reality for emergency situations in buildings with the support of indoor localization
Augmented reality is showing a continuous evolution due to the increasing number of smart glasses that are being used for different applications (e.g. training, marketing, industry, risk avoidance, etc.). In this paper, we present an implementation that uses augmented reality (AR) for emergency situations in smart buildings by means of indoor localization through the use of subGHz beacons. This also includes the mapping of emergency elements in the three-dimensional building, together with some example cases
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