Serious Game for Fire Evacuation

Fire safety for buildings has been of increasing concern due to the increase in occupant density in modern-day infrastructures. Efforts have been made by civil engineers to reduce loss in building fire accidents. For example, building codes have been refined to reduce the potential damage caused by fire by enforcing installation of fire detectors, alarm system, ventilation system, and sprinkler system. In addition, current building codes regulate the number of exits as well as the widths and heights of exits to allow an efficient evacuation process if the fire goes out of control. However the fire evacuation training aspect of fire safety is relatively immature. The fire evacuation process is still trained by carrying out traditional fire drills. However, the value of traditional fire drills has been questioned. Traditional fire evacuation drills fail to present a realistic fire environment to the participants. Traditional fire drills fail to raise enough seriousness for the participants since in most cases participants are informed about the drills beforehand. The cost of conducting these traditional fire drills can also be very high. Motivated by the problems faced by traditional fire drills, this research explores a new approach to more effectively and economically train people regarding the fire evacuation process. The new approach is to use a video game to train people for fire evacuation. The whole idea of using games for training and educational purposes falls under the concept of Serious Gaming, which has shown auspicious results in fields of military training, medical training, pilot training, and so on. In the virtual game environment, the fire environment can be simulated and rendered to the players. Doing so can allow the players to experience a more realistic fire environment and hence better prepare them for what to do in response to fire accidents. By setting a proper rewarding system, the game can motivate the players to treat the training more seriously. Also, since the training is carried out in the form of a game, it is more engaging and less costly. Currently, the game has been developed to render smoke and control the movement of agents. In order to make the game environment more realistic, the smoke is simulated and rendered using fire dynamics, and the agent movement is controlled by appropriate pedestrian models. It is worth mentioning that pedestrian modeling is still a relatively immature field of science and this game also serves as a tool for collecting and analyzing data for pedestrian models

Emergency Evacuation Software Model For Simulation Of Physical Changes

Public space such as schools, cinemas, shopping malls, etc. must have an emergency evacuation system in place. Such places are also required to follow certain regulations and protocols for emergency evacuation to assure the safety of their occupants inside from any unpredictable incident. For nearly two decades, companies/organizations are using simulation models/software for evacuation planning. Researchers are working on these software models to improve the efficiency using latest algorithms. This thesis focuses on creating a base software model of evacuation systems for 3D indoor environments to simulate physical changes such as retractable chairs, movable walls etc., to evaluate their effectiveness before committing to those changes. This research tries to address various flaws and shortcomings of previous software. We are using tools like Unity 3D and Autodesk Maya to simulate suggested changes. It provides planners as well as researchers a new perspective to work on new recommended physical changes to design public venues

Robot-Assisted Crowd Evacuation under Emergency Situations: A Survey

In the case of emergency situations, robotic systems can play a key role and save human lives in recovery and evacuation operations. To realize such a potential, we have to address many scientific and technical challenges encountered during robotic search and rescue missions. This paper reviews current state-of-the-art robotic technologies that have been deployed in the simulation of crowd evacuation, including both macroscopic and microscopic models used in simulating a crowd. Existing work on crowd simulation is analyzed and the robots used in crowd evacuation are introduced. Finally, the paper demonstrates how autonomous robots could be effectively deployed in disaster evacuation, as well as search and rescue missions

Developing an Adaptive Building Evacuation Simulation and Decision Support Framework using Cognitive Agent-Based Modelling

Preparing for an unprecedented event involving the movement of populations could take up large amounts of resources if done conventionally. The main motivation of this study is the behavioural modification approach which is an underexplored potential in evacuation dynamics, offering new possibilities in terms of practicality and ease of implementation. This paper tackles an adaptive building evacuation simulation and decision support framework that will serve as a guide to evaluate and propose evacuation strategies for disaster management researchers and decision-making authorities. The framework mainly involves the formulation of the cognitive agent model, the evacuation simulation, and the decision support. The timeliness in the Philippine context of the long-overdue “Big One” earthquake, the vulnerability of the case study, and the capability of the framework to be a standard guide where components can be customized by users based on the disaster type and site-specific requirements make this research a significant undertaking

Agent-based Crowd Simulation Modelling for a Gaming Environment

Crowd simulation study has become a favorite subject in the computer graphics community in the past three decades. It usually is a sub-function within many applications such as video games, films, and public security. This thesis proposes an independent crowd simulation model that is capable of running an Agent-based method through a gaming environment. It can simulate realistic human crowds with user-controllable features to provide a gaming-like experience. Our approach features an enhanced rendering system based on Distinguishable Agents Generating Method (DAGM). This method can generate distinguishable and scalable 3D human models in real-time. We also introduce our Multi-layer Collision System (MCS), which features a collision-message collection system and an evaluation processing system. We also introduce Building & City-planning Generating System (BCGS) for the purpose of setting up obstacles for the crowd during an evacuation simulation. Moreover, in this thesis, we also extend the study to other aspects such as crisis training and human animations to provide a complete agent-based crowd simulation model

Agent-based pathfinding algorithm in partially observable environment using raycasting and navigation Mesh

Pathfinding is a navigation component of the agent in an Evacuation Model. Most models apply pathfinding approach to provide global information to the agent from the start due to the assumption that evacuees would always head towards the nearest exit and all exits are used equally. Realistically, evacuees may only perceive its immediate surroundings, and be oblivious of other exits if the evacuee is unfamiliar with the environment. In evacuation, people tend to move towards familiar direction, which is the way they came in, and current solution of applying shortest path or least cost search approach does not demonstrate this emergent behaviour. In this study, as the counterpart of human, agents emulating human physical capabilities and limitations were developed in Unity3D Game Engine. The perception component of agent imitated human conic vision using Raycasting technique while its movement speed was limited to average movement speed of median population. Using input from Raycasting, a pathfinding algorithm based on the random mouse algorithm with localization feature using Navigation Mesh was developed. The environment for testing was built in the form of a maze in Unity3D and recordings were made to detect the agent arriving at the exit or not, and the time taken to navigate the environment in each iteration. Navigation Mesh was generated to represent walkable areas, and static obstacles that confined the spaces were labeled as walls. Unrendered cubes were placed at every intersection and exit, and were labeled accordingly. Result of the simulation showed that the pathfinding algorithm allowed the agent to successfully traverse the partially observable environment without prior knowledge, and the agent had demonstrated emergent behaviour with the integration of limited perception distance and realistic movement speed. The findings have shown that the algorithm can be used to simulate emergent behaviour in an Evacuation Model