Spatial Computers for Emergency Management

The evacuation of a building during an emergency situation, such as a fire, is a complex and challenging task. As the conditions inside the building change due to the spreading of the hazard, it becomes difficult for an evacuee to find the best evacuation path. Information systems can prove beneficial for the evacuees, as they provide them with directions regarding the best path to follow at any given time. In this paper we present two spatially distributed computing systems that operate inside a building. They adapt to the dynamic conditions during an evacuation while relying on local communication and computation for determining the best evacuation paths. The first system is composed of a network of decision nodes (DNs) positioned at specific locations inside the building. Their goal is to provide the evacuees with directions regarding the best available exit. The second system is composed of mobile communication nodes (CNs) carried by the evacuees. They form an opportunistic network in order to exchange information regarding the hazard and to direct the evacuees towards the safest exit. Sensor nodes that monitor the hazard intensity in the building are used by both systems. We use a multi-agent simulation platform that we developed to evaluate the performance of our proposed systems in evacuation scenarios inside multi-storey buildings. We show how parameters such as the frequency of information exchange between the nodes and communication ranges affect the performance of the systems.