Evacuation Route Guidance Scheme for Building Evacuation Using Wireless Mesh Network Systems

Abstract

In emergency cases of the building, users need to grasp the disaster situation and evacuation routes for an efficient and rapid evacuation. It is expected that multihop wireless network systems such as a wireless mesh network are useful to share the disaster information among users. The wireless mesh network is configured by user terminals and base stations which are deployed at the specified area by the administrators of the building. User terminals communicate with the others through the wireless mesh network without the aid of the infrastructure network and the central server. Access points are possible to work by battery power so that the wireless mesh network system is tolerant to the power outage. This paper proposes an evacuation route guidance scheme for building evacuation using wireless mesh network systems. User terminals grasp the up-to-date disaster situation in the building through the wireless mesh network, and then provide the evacuation route to the users. The timing of transmitting messages to share the information among users is crucial for the efficient and rapid evacuation. We implement the system into the network simulator and conduct the simulation experiments to confirm the network performance and the users’ evacuation time. Finally, we show the effect of the wireless mesh network and the effectiveness of the evacuation route guidance scheme.