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

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.