An Evaluation Model for Analyzing Robustness and Spatial Closeness of 3D Indoor Evacuation Networks

Lei Niu,Yi Li,Yiquan Song,Zhiyong Wang

doi:10.3390/ijgi10050331

Abstract

Indoor evacuation efficiency heavily relies on the connectivity status of navigation networks. During disastrous situations, the spreading of hazards (e.g., fires, plumes) significantly influences indoor navigation networks’ status. Nevertheless, current research concentrates on utilizing classical statistical methods to analyze this status and lacks the flexibility to evaluate the increasingly disastrous scope’s influence. We propose an evaluation method combining 3D spatial geometric distance and topology for emergency evacuations to address this issue. Within this method, we offer a set of indices to describe the nodes’ status and the entire network under emergencies. These indices can help emergency responders quickly identify vulnerable nodes and areas in the network, facilitating the generation of evacuation plans and improving evacuation efficiency. We apply this method to analyze the fire evacuation efficiency and resilience of two experiment buildings’ indoor networks. Experimental results show a strong influence on the network’s spatial connectivity on the evacuation efficiency under disaster situations.

Highlights

Emergency evacuation is a process in which people in dangerous areas have to be guided or transported to safe places
Since the occurrences of some notable emergency events, such as terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 and the 2005 London bombing, increased attention has been paid to indoor emergency evacuation [1,2,3,4]
We organize the rest of this paper as follows: in Section 3.1, we present the indices proposed for the connectivity analysis of 3D indoor navigation networks

Summary

Introduction

Emergency evacuation is a process in which people in dangerous areas have to be guided or transported to safe places. Indoor emergency evacuation is a complex phenomenon influenced by many factors, such as human awareness and interactions, hazard spread, and indoor environments. To the best of our knowledge, few works have evaluated spatial units’ connectivity in 3D environments for indoor emergency evacuation. The HUUC building has four floors and is currently the primary teaching and research facility occupied by the school of surveying and urban spatial information. Evaluating this building’s navigation network connectivity can reduce the risk of losing a life when facing fire events. The MLC building is on Zhaojiabang Road in Xuhui District, Shanghai, China; it has eight floors in the main structure and is famous for its giant glass ball, a landmark of Shanghai City

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Conclusion