EvacuSafe: A smart evacuation management system for buildings

Tall buildings and their occupants are highly sensitive to emergencies. Decision-making in these situations is complicated due to high population densities residing in these dwellings, complexity of emergency management strategies, significance of quick response in these cases, and unknown reactions of occupants under stress. This research develops an evacuation management system (EMS), named EvacuSafe, to support decision-making and crowd handling during evacuations. EvacuSafe supports a fully automated process of detecting the fire, simulating the growth pattern of the hazard, generating multiple strategies of evacuation, evaluating the strategies based on the risk to evacuees, and finally guiding evacuees along their egress route. EvacuSafe’s architecture consists of the three main modules of fire dynamics simulation, agent-based crowd simulation, and graph search path-planning. EvacuSafe is model-centric, and the entire data storage and data transfer between its three modules are based on Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). By integrating BIM, agent-based crowd simulation, and fire simulation, EvacuSafe enables a performance-based evaluation of building evacuations for different building designs. In real-time mode, EvacuSafe converts BIM to a Geometric Network Graph (GNG) and performs path-planning and guidance during emergencies. In addition, the guidance system in EvacuSafe is based on the application of Adaptive Dynamic Signage System (ADSS). This research aims for a smart emergency management system that will be less restricted by human factors and more efficient in saving the lives of occupants in emergencies.