Holonic System for Real-Time Emergency Management in Buildings

TheScientificWorldJournal, 2014

Recent building emergency management research has highlighted the need for the effective utilization of dynamically changing building information. BIM (building information modelling) can play a significant role in this process due to its comprehensive and standardized data format and integrated process. This paper introduces a BIM based virtual environment supported by virtual reality (VR) and a serious game engine to address several key issues for building emergency management, for example, timely two-way information updating and better emergency awareness training. The focus of this paper lies on how to utilize BIM as a comprehensive building information provider to work with virtual reality technologies to build an adaptable immersive serious game environment to provide real-time fire evacuation guidance. The innovation lies on the seamless integration between BIM and a serious game based virtual reality (VR) environment aiming at practical problem solving by leveraging state-of...

2017

Smart Cities require reliable means for managing installations that offer essential services to the citizens. In this paper we focus on the problem of evacuation of smart buildings in case of emergencies. In particular, we present an abstract architecture for situation-aware evacuation guidance systems in smart buildings, describe its key modules in detail, and provide some concrete examples of its structure and dynamics.

2011

A scientific and effective evacuation plan plays an important role in improving the event reaction ability of the traffic system and saves rescue time and reduces property losses during a disaster. In this paper we presented a framework of Real-Time Decision Support System-Disaster based on the Open Community structure and diversion route models. Distinct from previous planning models, the Real-Time Decision Support System-Disaster Evacuation has following characteristic: (1) Integrate information based on OC platform and thus enlarge the scope of the information collection after disaster. (2) Dynamically update the evacuation plan. This paper actually lays out the framework of RDSS-DS but leaves details for further work.

Computer Science and Information Systems, 2017

In this paper, we consider the route coordination problem in emergency evacuation of large smart buildings. The building evacuation time is crucial in saving lives in emergency situations caused by imminent natural or man-made threats and disasters. Conventional approaches to evacuation route coordination are static and predefined. They rely on evacuation plans present only at a limited number of building locations and possibly a trained evacuation personnel to resolve unexpected contingencies. Smart buildings today are equipped with sensory infrastructure that can be used for an autonomous situation-aware evacuation guidance optimized in real time. A system providing such a guidance can help in avoiding additional evacuation casualties due to the flaws of the conventional evacuation approaches. Such a system should be robust and scalable to dynamically adapt to the number of evac-uees and the size and safety conditions of a building. In this respect, we propose a distributed route recommender architecture for situation-aware evacuation guidance in smart buildings and describe its key modules in detail. We give an example of its functioning dynamics on a use case.

The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, 2020

One of the main problems of rescue workers in confrontation of fired complex buildings is the lack of sufficient information about the building indoor environment and their emergency exit ways. Building information modeling (BIM) is a database for building a 3D model of building information to create a 3D building geometry network model. This paper has implemented some GIS and BIM integration analyses to determine the shortest and safest paths to people under fire risk and simulate their movement in the building. Plasco building was a multi-story shop in Tehran which has been fired in 2017 and destroyed. This paper attempts to simulate the firefighting and rescue operations in Plasco Building using an integration of BIM and GIS. There is no detailed information about the building and the fire incident, therefore the developed BIM and corresponding geometric network might differ slightly. The shortest and safest paths to the exit door or windows where the fire ladders are located are computed and analyzed. As a result of 15 scenarios developed in this paper, it was found that at 87% of the cases, the safest paths for the emergency exit of the people at risk were longer than the shortest paths. This study has evaluated different scenarios for the shortest and safest paths using Dijkstra algorithm considering different origins and destination points in the 3D indoor environment to assist the rescue operations.

2016

Copyright © 2014 Bin Wang et al.This is an open access article distributed under theCreativeCommonsAttribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Recent building emergency management research has highlighted the need for the effective utilization of dynamically changing building information. BIM (building information modelling) can play a significant role in this process due to its comprehensive and standardized data format and integrated process. This paper introduces a BIM based virtual environment supported by virtual reality (VR) and a serious game engine to address several key issues for building emergency management, for example, timely two-way information updating and better emergency awareness training. The focus of this paper lies on how to utilize BIM as a comprehensive building information provider to work with virtual reality technologies to build an adaptable immersive seri...

35th International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (ISARC 2018) , Berlin, Germany, 2018

Building management systems monitor and control building performances in real-time. Most control systems, which have been developed in the last decade, achieve the required performances relying on a centralised and hierarchical framework. In the regular operation phase, these systems are usually able to efficiently reach their goals, whereas they often fail to stick to predetermined targets in the presence of unforeseen disturbances. As a matter of fact, traditional control systems suffer complex unforeseen scenarios that cannot be modelled by the analytics and knowledge integrated in these systems, because hierarchical systems strive to keep full control at any level. As an alternative, holonic management systems, which have been successfully applied in the manufacturing field, can tackle this type of drawbacks. The flexibility of their elementary units, the holons, makes it possible to avoid the rigid structure of hierarchical systems so as to respond quickly to disturbances and dynamically rearrange their structure. In this paper, a first holonic computing structure is developed for indoor comfort management in an office room. The structure developed can drive both the operation management phase and the medium-and long-term measurement of performances. The former is implemented by means of a sequence of specific minimum cost actions which is based on the overall throughput effectiveness (OTE) metrics. The latter exploits the same OTE metrics to suggest corrective and improvement actions. Finally, OTE diagnoses are redirected to a BIM model to support decision making for long-term improvement actions on the building facility.

2011 IEEE GLOBECOM Workshops (GC Wkshps), 2011

The evacuation of urban areas during an emergency is complex and challenging due to the dynamic conditions and ambiguity of information available to people in the affected area. Autonomous navigation systems can improve the outcome of such evacuations by providing up-to-date guidance and directions to people during the emergency. In this paper we present two distributed navigation systems deployed inside a confined space, such as a building, that use simple but effective communications to gather and disseminate information for the computation of evacuation paths. The first system is composed of a network of static decision nodes (DNs) positioned in the building, where DNs distributedly compute the best paths using local communication and computation, and each DN provides directions to people in its vicinity. The second system is composed of mobile communication nodes (CNs) carried by the people in the area. CNs form an opportunistic network in order to exchange information regarding the hazard and each CNs directs its user towards the safest/closest exit. Sensor nodes predeployed in the building monitor the environment and provide their measurements to both systems. We investigate the effect of failures of DNs on the evacuation outcome and study how the two systems can be used in conjunction to overcome such problems. A multi-agent simulation platform is used for the performance evaluation of our proposed systems in evacuation scenarios inside a three-floor building.

Geo-information for disaster management, 2005

Disastrous accidents (fire, chemical releases, earthquake, terrorist attacks, etc) in large public and residential buildings (discotheques, cafes, trade and industrial buildings) usually result in tragic consequences for people and environments. Such accidents have clearly showed that need for reliable systems supporting rescue operations is urgently appealing. Amongst all, giving appropriate information to the ordinary people in/around the affected area considering the disaster developments (available exists, assessable corridors, etc.) and the human factors (age, gender, disability) are of critical importance for the success of the rescue operation.

Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, 2016

The extreme importance of emergency response in complex buildings during natural and human-induced disasters has been widely acknowledged. In particular, there is a need for efficient algorithms for finding safest evacuation routes, which would take into account the 3D structure of buildings, their relevant semantics and the nature and shape of hazards. In this paper, we propose algorithms for safest routes and balanced routes in buildings, where an extreme event with many epicentres is occurring. In a balanced route, a trade-off between route length and hazard proximity is made. The algorithms are based on a novel approach that integrates a multiattribute decision-making technique, Dijkstra's classical algorithm and the introduced hazard proximity numbers, hazard propagation coefficient and proximity index for a route.