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

Reinforcement learning in a multi-agent framework for pedestrian simulation

El objetivo de la tesis consiste en la utilización de Aprendizaje por refuerzo (Reinforcement Learning) para generar simulaciones plausibles de peatones en diferentes entornos. Metodología Se ha desarrollado un marco de trabajo multi-agente donde cada agente virtual que aprende un comportamiento de navegación por interacción con el mundo virtual en el que se encuentra junto con el resto de agentes. El mundo virtual es simulado con un motor físico (ODE) que está calibrado con parámetros de peatones humanos extraídos de la bibliografía de la materia. El marco de trabajo es flexible y permite utilizar diferentes algoritmos de aprendizaje (en concreto Q-Learning y Sarsa(lambda) en combinación con diferentes técnicas de generalización del espacio de estados (en concreto cuantización Vectorial y tile coding). Como herramientas de análisis de los comportamientos aprendidos se utilizan diagramas fundamentales (relación velocidad/densidad), mapas de densidad, cronogramas y rendimientos (en términos del porcentaje de agentes que consiguen llegar al objetivo). Conclusiones: Tras una batería de experimentos en diferentes escenarios (un total de 6 escenarios distintos) y los correspondientes analisis de resultados, las conclusiones son las siguientes: - Se han conseguido comportamientos plausibles de peatones -Los comportamientos son robustos al escalado y presentan capacidades de abstracción (comportamientos a niveles táctico y de planificación) -Los comportamientos aprendidos son capaces de generar comportamientos colectivos emergentes -La comparación con otro modelo de peatones estandar (Modelo de Helbing) y los análisis realizados a nivel de diagramas fundamentales, indican que la dinámica aprendida es coherente y similar a una dinámica de peatones

Modern meat: the next generation of meat from cells

Modern Meat is the first textbook on cultivated meat, with contributions from over 100 experts within the cultivated meat community. The Sections of Modern Meat comprise 5 broad categories of cultivated meat: Context, Impact, Science, Society, and World. The 19 chapters of Modern Meat, spread across these 5 sections, provide detailed entries on cultivated meat. They extensively tour a range of topics including the impact of cultivated meat on humans and animals, the bioprocess of cultivated meat production, how cultivated meat may become a food option in Space and on Mars, and how cultivated meat may impact the economy, culture, and tradition of Asia

Unmanned aerial vehicle communications for civil applications: a review

The use of drones, formally known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has significantly increased across a variety of applications over the past few years. This is due to the rapid advancement towards the design and production of inexpensive and dependable UAVs and the growing request for the utilization of such platforms particularly in civil applications. With their intrinsic attributes such as high mobility, rapid deployment and flexible altitude, UAVs have the potential to be utilized in many wireless system applications. On the one hand, UAVs are able to operate as flying mobile terminals within wireless/cellular networks to support a variety of missions such as goods delivery, search and rescue, precision agriculture monitoring, and remote sensing. On the other hand, UAVs can be utilized as aerial base stations to increase wireless communication coverage, reliability, and the capacity of wireless systems without additional investment in wireless systems infrastructure. The aim of this article is to review the current applications of UAVs for civil and commercial purposes. The focus of this paper is on the challenges and communication requirements associated with UAV-based communication systems. This article initially classifies UAVs in terms of various parameters, some of which can impact UAVs’ communication performance. It then provides an overview of aerial networking and investigates UAVs routing protocols specifically, which are considered as one of the challenges in UAV communication. This article later investigates the use of UAV networks in a variety of civil applications and considers many challenges and communication demands of these applications. Subsequently, different types of simulation platforms are investigated from a communication and networking viewpoint. Finally, it identifies areas of future research

Modellierung und Simulation von Gebäudeevakuierung in Notsituationen: Ein Agenten-basierter Ansatz

Evacuation (from Latin ``evacuare'') is the expression which refers to the movement of people getting away from the source of hazard. In general, evacuations are complex in their dynamics due to the variation of the behavioural responses of individuals as part of evacuating crowds. Independent of the type of emergency, evacuation times are a common design measure for guaranteeing personal integrity for people inside of buildings. The accomplishment of design standards regarding evacuation times leads in practise to modifications of architectural design and construction materials of new buildings. Modifications in historic buildings are in contrary limited due to their cultural significance and difficulty of adaptation to modern safety standards. In addition to this, general safety regulations do not cover all aspects required for preventing fatal incidents due to evacuations. In this sense, the study of evacuation dynamics is relevant to the reduction of risk of fatal events. The present thesis proposes a mathematical model for the description of the behavioural dynamics of controlled evacuations based on visual perception. The object-oriented model of PerPedES (Perceiving Pedestrian Evacuation Simulator), which was developed for this thesis, describes the global dynamics of an evacuation by means of individual rules. Walking direction and speed of the modelled pedestrians are obtained based on information derived from a model for visual perception utilising a modified ray-tracing. Within PerPedES, an individual criterion for moving decision motivated by psychological considerations is introduced. The resulting traces of simulated evacuations present similar characteristics to motion patterns described in literature. In particular, arch- and lane-formations, clogging-effect, overtaking- and collision-avoidance manoeuvres. Within the context of risk reduction in the built environment, the presented behavioural model is applied in a case-study. In particular, for the analysis of the vulnerability of the occupants of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, when pursuing an evacuation. In this thesis, mean evacuation times and individual walking speeds were computed together with the evacuation traces left by the occupant.Evakuierung (vom lateinischen Wort ``evacuare") beschreibt die Bewegung von Menschen weg von einer Gefährdung. Generell sind Evakuierungen komplex in ihrer Dynamik. Dies liegt begründet in der Individualität von menschlichen Reaktionen innerhalb von Menschenmengen. Für die Gewährleistung der Sicherheit von Personen innerhalb von Gebäuden ist die Evakuierungszeit, unabhängig von der Art einer Notsituation, von entscheidender Bedeutung. Die Umsetzung baulicher Standards mit Bezug auf Evakuierungszeiten führt in der Praxis zu Modifikationen an Architektur und Material neuer Gebäude. Modifikationen an historischen Gebäuden können hingegen aufgrund von Denkmalschutzbestimmungen modernen Sicherheitsstandards nicht genüge tragen. Zusätzlich dazu decken allgemeine Sicherheitsregulierungen nicht alle Aspekte ab, die erforderlich sind, um fatale Vorfälle auf Grund von Evakuierungen zu vermeiden. In diesem Sinne ist die Untersuchung der Dynamik von Evakuierungen für die Reduktion solcher fatalen Ereignisse von großer Bedeutung. Die vorliegende Arbeit präsentiert ein mathematisches Modell für die Beschreibung des dynamischen Verlaufs von kontrollierten Evakuierungen, welches auf visueller Wahrnehmung basiert. Das Modell des für diese Arbeit entwickelten Objekt-orientierten Simulators PerPedES (Perceiving Pedestrian Evacuation Simulator) beschreibt die globale Dynamik einer Evakuierung auf Basis von individuellen Zuständen einzelner Modellfußfänger. Die Laufrichtung und Geschwindigkeit dieser Modellfußfänger wird auf Basis eines Modells für visuelle Wahrnehmung ermittelt, welches ein modifiziertes ray-tracing verwendet. Innerhalb von PerPedES wird ein individuelles Kriterium für Bewegungsentscheidungen eingesetzt, welches von psychologischen Betrachtungen motiviert ist. Die aus Simulationen resultierenden Laufwege weisen ähnliche Charakteristika auf, wie in der Literatur dokumentiert. Nachvollzogen werden konnten insbesondere Bogen- und Schlangenformierungen, Verstopfungseffekte und Überholmanöver sowie Kollisionsvermeidung. Im Kontext der Risikoreduktion in Gebäudeumgebungen wurde eine Fallstudie durchgeführt, welche die Vulnerabilität von Besuchern der Uffizi Gallery in Florenz untersucht. Dabei wurden sowohl mittlere Evakuierungszeiten, als auch statistische Verteilung der Laufgeschwindigkeiten während einer Evakuierung und Wegspuren berechnet

Proceedings of the WABER 2017 Conference

The scientific information published in peer-reviewed outlets carries special status, and confers unique responsibilities on editors and authors. We must protect the integrity of the scientific process by publishing only manuscripts that have been properly peer-reviewed by scientific reviewers and confirmed by editors to be of sufficient quality. I confirm that all papers in the WABER 2017 Conference Proceedings have been through a peer review process involving initial screening of abstracts, review of full papers by at least two referees, reporting of comments to authors, revision of papers by authors, and reevaluation of re-submitted papers to ensure quality of content. It is the policy of the West Africa Built Environment Research (WABER) Conference that all papers must go through a systematic peer review process involving examination by at least two referees who are knowledgeable on the subject. A paper is only accepted for publication in the conference proceedings based on the recommendation of the reviewers and decision of the editors. The names and affiliation of members of the Scientific Committee & Review Panel for WABER 2017 Conference are published in the Conference Proceedings and on our website www.waberconference.com Papers in the WABER Conference Proceedings are published open access on the conference website www.waberconference.com to facilitate public access to the research papers and wider dissemination of the scientific knowledge