16 research outputs found
Routing Diverse Evacuees with Cognitive Packets
This paper explores the idea of smart building evacuation when evacuees can
belong to different categories with respect to their ability to move and their
health conditions. This leads to new algorithms that use the Cognitive Packet
Network concept to tailor different quality of service needs to different
evacuees. These ideas are implemented in a simulated environment and evaluated
with regard to their effectiveness.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure
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
Emergency response systems for disaster management in buildings
Emergency response operations can benefit from the use of information systems that reduce decision making time and facilitate co-ordination between the participating units. We propose the use of two such systems and evaluate them with a specialised software platform that we have developed for simulation of disasters in buildings. The first system provides movement decision support to evacuees by directing them through the shortest or less hazardous routes to the exit. It is composed of a network of decision nodes and sensor nodes, positioned at specific locations inside the building. The recommendations of the decision nodes are computed in a distributed manner and communicated to the evacuees or rescue personnel in their vicinity. The second system uses wireless-equipped robots that move inside a disaster area and establish a network for two-way communication between trapped civilians and rescuers. They are autonomous and their goal is to maximise the number of civilians connected to the network. We evaluate both proposed information systems in various emergency scenarios, using the specialised simulation software that we developed
Routing Diverse Crowds in Emergency with Dynamic Grouping
Evacuee routing algorithms in emergency typically adopt one single criterion
to compute desired paths and ignore the specific requirements of users caused
by different physical strength, mobility and level of resistance to hazard. In
this paper, we present a quality of service (QoS) driven multi-path routing
algorithm to provide diverse paths for different categories of evacuees. This
algorithm borrows the concept of Cognitive Packet Network (CPN), which is a
flexible protocol that can rapidly solve optimal solution for any user-defined
goal function. Spatial information regarding the location and spread of hazards
is taken into consideration to avoid that evacuees be directed towards
hazardous zones. Furthermore, since previous emergency navigation algorithms
are normally insensitive to sudden changes in the hazard environment such as
abrupt congestion or injury of civilians, evacuees are dynamically assigned to
several groups to adapt their course of action with regard to their on-going
physical condition and environments. Simulation results indicate that the
proposed algorithm which is sensitive to the needs of evacuees produces better
results than the use of a single metric. Simulations also show that the use of
dynamic grouping to adjust the evacuees' category and routing algorithms with
regard for their on-going health conditions and mobility, can achieve higher
survival rates.Comment: Contains 6 pages, 5 pages. Accepted by PerNEM' 201
An Emergency-Adaptive Routing Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks for Building Fire Hazard Monitoring
Fire hazard monitoring and evacuation for building environments is a novel application area for the deployment of wireless sensor networks. In this context, adaptive routing is essential in order to ensure safe and timely data delivery in building evacuation and fire fighting resource applications. Existing routing mechanisms for wireless sensor networks are not well suited for building fires, especially as they do not consider critical and dynamic network scenarios. In this paper, an emergency-adaptive, real-time and robust routing protocol is presented for emergency situations such as building fire hazard applications. The protocol adapts to handle dynamic emergency scenarios and works well with the routing hole problem. Theoretical analysis and simulation results indicate that our protocol provides a real-time routing mechanism that is well suited for dynamic emergency scenarios in building fires when compared with other related work
An Emergency-Adaptive Routing Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks for Building Fire Hazard Monitoring
Fire hazard monitoring and evacuation for building environments is a novel application area for the deployment of wireless sensor networks. In this context, adaptive routing is essential in order to ensure safe and timely data delivery in building evacuation and fire fighting resource applications. Existing routing mechanisms for wireless sensor networks are not well suited for building fires, especially as they do not consider critical and dynamic network scenarios. In this paper, an emergency-adaptive, real-time and robust routing protocol is presented for emergency situations such as building fire hazard applications. The protocol adapts to handle dynamic emergency scenarios and works well with the routing hole problem. Theoretical analysis and simulation results indicate that our protocol provides a real-time routing mechanism that is well suited for dynamic emergency scenarios in building fires when compared with other related work
A real-time and robust routing protocol for building fire emergency applications using wireless sensor networks
Fire monitoring and evacuation for building environments is a novel application for the deployment of wireless sensor networks. In this context, real-time and robust routing is essential to ensure safe and timely building evacuation and the best application of fire fighting resources. Existing routing mechanisms for wireless sensor networks are not well suited for building emergencies, especially as they do not explicitly consider critical and rapidly changing network scenarios. In this paper, a novel real-time and robust routing protocol (RTRR) is presented for building fire emergency applications. It adapts to handle critical emergency scenarios and supports dynamic routing reconfiguration. Simulation results indicate that our protocol satisfies the criteria necessary to support building emergency scenarios