Search Results (15)

Safe and efficient building evacuation for heterogeneous populations, particularly individuals with disabilities, remains a critical challenge in emergency management. This study proposes a hybrid evacuation framework that integrates Floor Field Cellular Automaton (FFCA) with reinforcement learning, specifically a Deep Q-Network (DQN), to enhance adaptive decision-making in dynamic and complex environments. The model incorporates velocity heterogeneity, friction-based conflict resolution, and real-time path planning to capture diverse mobility capabilities and interactions among evacuees. Simulation experiments were conducted under varying population densities, walking speeds, and exit configurations, considering four types of occupant groups: able-bodied individuals, wheelchair users, and people with visual or hearing impairments. The results demonstrate that the DQN-enhanced model consistently outperforms the conventional SFF + DFF approach, achieving significant reductions in evacuation time, particularly under high-density and reduced-speed scenarios. Notably, the DQN dynamically adapts evacuation paths to mitigate congestion, thereby improving both system efficiency and the safety of vulnerable groups. These findings highlight the potential of combining CA-based environmental modeling with reinforcement learning to develop adaptive and inclusive evacuation strategies. The proposed framework provides practical insights for designing evacuation protocols and intelligent navigation systems in public buildings. Future work will extend the proposed FFCA + DQN framework to more complex and realistic environments, including multi-exit and multi-level buildings, and further integrate multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) architectures to enable decentralized adaptation among heterogeneous evacuees. Furthermore, lightweight DQN variants and distributed training schemes will be explored to enhance computational scalability, while empirical data from evacuation drills and real-world case studies will be used for model calibration and validation, thereby improving predictive accuracy and generalizability. Full article

School-aged children are a vulnerable group in emergencies, showing distinct grouping behaviors under ordered and disordered evacuations. This study investigated how these behaviors affect evacuation efficiency and how spatial conditions shape outcomes. Two drills were conducted on 216 children aged 6–12. Indicators including movement speed, crowd density, and grouping type were analyzed from video data. Disordered evacuation featured unstable group structures, variable speeds, and faster but less consistent movement. In contrast, ordered evacuation improved group stability and coordination, with only slight speed reductions (16% in corridors and 12% in stairways). Spatial conditions also affected grouping behavior. Wider corridors encouraged lateral dispersion and required stronger guidance, whereas stairways benefited from reduced control to alleviate congestion. These findings highlight how grouping behavior affects evacuation efficiency across evacuation forms and spatial settings, and underscore the importance of coordinating evacuation management strategies with building circulation design. The results provide empirical evidence for enhancing the safety of school-aged children during evacuations and offer practical guidance for optimizing school evacuation strategies and educational building design. Full article

Emergency preparedness training in organizations frequently involves simple evacuation drills triggered by fire alarms, limiting the opportunities for broader skill development. Digital technologies, particularly virtual reality (VR), offer promising methods to enhance learning for handling incidents and evacuations. However, implementing VR-based training remains challenging due to unclear integration strategies within organizational practices and a lack of empirical evidence of VR’s effectiveness. This paper explores how VR-based training tools can be implemented in schools to enhance emergency preparedness among students, teachers, and staff. Following a design science research process, data were collected from a questionnaire-based study involving 12 participants and an exploratory study with 13 participants. The questionnaire-based study investigates initial attitudes and willingness to adopt VR training, while the exploratory study assesses the VR prototype’s usability, realism, and perceived effectiveness for emergency preparedness training. Despite a limited sample size and technical constraints of the early prototype, findings indicate strong student enthusiasm for gamified and immersive learning experiences. Teachers emphasized the need for technical and instructional support to regularly utilize VR training modules, while firefighters acknowledged the potential of VR tools, but also highlighted the critical importance of regular drills and professional validation. The relevance of the results of utilizing VR in this context is further discussed in terms of how it can be integrated into university curricula and aligned with other accessible digital preparedness tools. Full article

The article presents the results of experimental studies of evacuation of 50 people from a road tunnel in various smoke conditions. Calculations of total evacuation times, pre-movement times and movement speeds were carried out and the impact of smoke on the speed of movement was analyzed. The pre-movement times, the alarm realization and response times for the subsequent experiments (1, 2 and 3) were 36, 7 and 5 s, respectively. The total evacuation times for 3 experiments were 340, 301 and 215 s. It has been shown that the speed of movement in smoke depends not only on the density of smoke, but also on the very attitude of the experiment participants and knowledge of the tunnel. It has also been shown that the adverse impact of low visibility on the evacuation time and movement speed is as important as the motivation of the evacuees and the effect of learning. In order to collect the observations of the participants, as well as assess potential aspects which might have influenced the process of evacuation, a survey was conducted after both experiments. The answers show that the two main reasons that prompted the evacuation were smoke in the tunnel and the fire drill. Full article

In fire emergency management, a delayed execution will cause a significant number of casualties. Conventional fire drills typically only identify a certain percentage of evacuation bottlenecks after the building has been constructed, which is hard to improve. This paper proposes an innovative framework to validate fire emergency evacuation at the early design stage. According to the experience and knowledge of fire emergency evacuation design, the proposed framework also introduces a seamless two-way information channel to embed fire emergency evacuation simulations into a BIM-based design environment. Several critical factors for fire evacuation have been reviewed in relevant domain knowledge, which is used to build virtual characters to test in experimental scenarios. The results are analyzed to validate fire emergency evacuation factors, and the feedback knowledge is stored as a knowledge model for further applications. Full article

The electro-discharge (ED) drilling of precision boreholes in difficult-to-machine materials, particularly with respect to the cost-effectiveness of the overall process, is still a challenge. Flushing is one key factor for the precise machining of boreholes, especially with high aspect ratios. Therefore, the influence of internal and external flushing geometries for six types of brass tool electrodes with a diameter of 3 mm with and without a helical groove was analyzed experimentally and numerically. Using this helical external flushing channel, drilling experiments in X170CrVMo18-3-1 (Elmax Superclean) with an aspect ratio of five revealed a material removal rate (MRR) that was increased by 112% compared with a rod electrode, increased by 28% for a single-channel tool electrode and decreased by 8% for a multi-channel tool electrode. Signal analyses complemented these findings and highlighted correlations between classified discharge event types and the experimental target parameters. Amongst others, it was verified that the arcing frequency ratio drove the electrode wear rate and the beneficial frequency ratio correlated with the MRR and the surface roughness Ra. Sophisticated 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models of the liquid phase were introduced and evaluated in great detail to demonstrate the validity and further elucidate the effect of the external flushing channel on the evacuation capability of debris and gas bubbles. The presented methods and models were found to be suitable for obtaining in-depth knowledge about the flushing conditions in the ED drilling working gap. Full article

Fire safety evacuation has been used in numerous different kinds of buildings. This research conducts a scientometric review of fire safety evacuation applications and advances in the buildings to clarify the research trends of fire evacuation in the future and provide guidance for relevant research. A total of 3312 journals and conference proceedings were analyzed through different dimensions. The result proves that evacuation environments concentrate mainly on residential building, commercial building, school, and railway station. The characteristics of the evacuee have been gradually refined in recent years, including children, the elderly, patients, and vulnerable groups. The main experimental approaches of fire safety evacuation are evacuation drills, site records, and VR/AR experiments. The crowd behavior models mainly consist of six types: a cellular automata model, a social force model, a lattice gas model, a game-theoretic model, an animal agent-based model, and a computer agent-based model. The analysis results in the theoretical method are becoming gradually closer to the behavioral characteristics and movement data of the crowd during the actual evacuation with improvements of practical considerations. The study of evacuation drills, disaster rescue, emergencies, and other external environmental factors will become the forefront of future research, and subway stations, airports, high-rise building, and other personnel places will be the focus of the study of crowd evacuation. Full article

Public participation in community-organized disaster mitigation activities is important for improving disaster mitigation capacity. With data from 260 questionnaires, this study compared the current status of public participation in model disaster mitigation communities and nonmodel communities in a geological-disaster-prone area. Three community-organized disaster mitigation education activities were compared cross-sectionally. A binary logistic regression was used to analyze the effects of attitude, perceived behavioral control, disaster experience, and other key factors on the public’s choice to participate in community disaster mitigation activities. The analysis results indicated that model communities had higher public participation in two efforts, evacuation drills and self-help skills training, and lower participation in activities that invited them to express their feedback than nonmodel communities. The influence of attitudinal factors on the decision to participate in disaster mitigation activities had a high similarity across community types. The public participation in model disaster mitigation communities is influenced by factors such as subjective norms and participation cognition; the behavior of people in nonmodel communities is influenced by factors such as previous experience with disasters, perceived behavioral control, risk perception, and participation cognition and has a greater potential for disaster mitigation community construction. This study provides practical evidence and theoretical support for strengthening the sustainable development of disaster mitigation community building. Full article

During the last two decades, managers have been applying Building Information Modeling (BIM) to improve the quality of management as well as operation. The effectiveness of applications within a BIM environment is restrained by the limited immersive experience in virtual environments. Defined as the immersive visualization of virtual scenes, Virtual Reality (VR) is an emerging technology that can be actively explored to expand BIM to more usage. This paper highlights the need for a structured methodology for the integration of BIM/VR and gives a generic review of BIM and VR in training platforms for management in infrastructures. The rationales for fire evacuation training were formed based on the review. Then, methods of configuring BIM + VR prototypes were formulated for emergency response in highway tunnels. Furthermore, a conceptual framework integrating BIM with VR was proposed to enable the visualization of the physical context in real-time during the training. The result indicated that, extended to the training system of highway management via the “hand” of BIM, the VR solution can benefit more areas, such as the cost of fire evacuation drills in highway tunnels and the tendency of accidents to occur in the emergency response. Full article

In Bangladesh, extreme weather events displace about one million people each year. The national government resettles these climate victims by allocating houses in so-called cluster villages. This paper examines how local disaster management officials manage the resettlement of climate victims in Bangladesh’s coastal areas. For this paper, we conducted a preliminary field work, questionnaire survey, and informal phone interviews. The questionnaire survey was conducted from March to July 2020 among 70 central government civil servants who worked as disaster management officials and played a pivotal role in local decision making for climate victim resettlement. This paper first examines how national disaster response policies were implemented in local areas before, during, and after disasters. Our questionnaire survey results show five management challenges local officials faced in managing displaced people: (1) local officials’ limited onsite experience, (2) varied impacts of natural disasters on islands and the mainland, (3) arbitrary engagement in disaster response actions, (4) lack of evacuation drills, and (5) weak coordination skills among relevant stakeholders. In particular, these challenges were acute among island officials. Our multiple regression analyses show that the respondents’ age and onsite work experience (p < 0.05) significantly affected their perceptions. Overall, these findings suggest a need to drastically improve local disaster governance capacity. This study offers insights into how countries with similar challenges may respond to climate-induced displacement in the future. Full article

In order to achieve a comprehensive study regarding evacuation efficiency in underground space, globally accepted regulations and standards include, among other parameters, the maximum unimpeded travel speed of occupants in case of emergency evacuation. Researchers attempt to investigate the variation of travel speed using different approaches. The aim of this paper is to study occupants’ travel speed during evacuation procedures in an underground space. Underground spaces have special requirements as they differentiate from a typical building regarding the absence of physical lighting, the fact that exit route paths are always ascending and the limited orientation awareness of their users. A total of 40 volunteers participated in a large-scale experiment that involved the evacuation of the underground space in real time. Two distinct evacuation drills took place, the first one in a smoke-free environment and the second simulated fire conditions via the presence of dense artificial smoke. During each trial, the required evacuation time as well as the walking speed of each occupant were monitored, with the aid of digital cameras positioned in appropriate spots inside the underground space. The evacuation speed resulted from the experiments is compared to those of international regulations (e.g., NFPA 130) regarding horizontal travelling, as well as travelling on an upward staircase. The effect of the presence of smoke on evacuation speed is discussed. The importance of direct and constant guidance to the occupants of an underground space is highlighted during evacuation in a smoked environment and its contribution to safety improvement. Finally, the effect of the egress route type of an underground space on occupants’ speed is discussed and how this may affect the decision making during the design of an underground infrastructure, in order to achieve a safe environment. Full article

Predicting evacuation patterns is useful in emergency management situations such as an earthquake. To find out how pre-trained individuals interact with one another to achieve their own goal to reach the exit as fast as possible firstly, we investigated urban people’s evacuation behavior under earthquake disaster coditions, established crowd response rules in emergencies, and described the drill strategy and exit familiarity quantitatively through a cellular automata model. By setting different exit familiarity ratios, simulation experiments under different strategies were conducted to predict people’s reactions before an emergency. The corresponding simulation results indicated that the evacuees’ training level could affect a multi-exit zone’s evacuation pattern and clearance time. Their exit choice preferences may disrupt the exit options’ balance, leading to congestion in some of the exits. Secondly, due to people’s rejection of long distances, congestion, and unfamiliar exits, some people would hesitant about the evacuation direction during the evacuation process. This hesitation would also significantly reduce the overall evacuation efficiency. Finally, taking a community in Zhuhai City, China, as an example, put forward the best urban evacuation drill strategy. The quantitative relation between exit familiar level and evacuation efficiency was obtained. The final results showed that the optimized evacuation plan could improve evacuation’s overall efficiency through the self-organization effect. These studies may have some impact on predicting crowd behavior during evacuation and designing the evacuation plan. Full article

Human behavior in an emergency situation is the starting point for all evacuation planning projects. A better understanding of the decisions made by the occupants during an emergency can help to develop calculation tools that can create more efficient forms of visual and audio communication and implement better procedures for evacuating people. The difficulty in studying human behavior lies in the very nature of emergencies, as they are unpredictable, somewhat exceptional and not reproducible. Fire drills play a role in training emergency teams and building occupants, but they cannot be used to collect real data on people’s behavior unless the drill is so realistic that it could endanger the occupants’ safety. In the procedure described here, through the use of a Virtual Reality device that encompasses all critical phases, including user characterization data before the virtual experience, building design parameters and fire scenario, key variables of human behavior can be recorded in order to evaluate each user’s experience satisfactorily. This research shows that the average delay in starting an evacuation is greater than one minute, that anxiety levels and heart rates increase during a fire and that people do not pay attention to evacuation signals. Further analysis of the quantitative data may also provide the causes for decision-making. The use of devices that create realistic virtual environments is a solution for conducting “what if” tests to study and record the decisions taken by the users who undergo the experience in a way that is completely safe for them. Full article

In thermal friction drilling (TFD) operations, the geometrical dimensions of bushing shape, height and wall thickness are the most vital consequences, since these increase the connecting length and strength. In this paper, AA7075-T651 aluminum alloys with 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 mm thicknesses were drilled with the TFD process in order to investigate density, volume ratio, and height and wall thickness of the bushings. The experiments were conducted at constant spindle speed and feed rate conditions by using High Speed Steel (HSS) conical tools of 5, 10, 15, and 20 mm in diameter. It was experimentally found that the bushing height and the wall thickness had a tendency to increase linearly with the increase in both material thickness and tool diameter. The effect of tool diameter was found to have more influence on the measurable values than the thickness of the drilled material. The density of the bushing changed trivially. Approximately 70–75 percent of the evacuated material formed the bushing shape in TFD operations. Full article

There has been increasing interest in effective evacuation in response to natural disasters, particularly in understanding human evacuation behavior. It is important to determine the factors affecting evacuation decision making to promote prompt evacuation. This study focuses on the effects of past experiences on evacuation behavior in South Korea, especially the evacuation drill experience. Additionally, the influence of demographic and socio-economic characteristics on evacuation behavior is considered. After collecting data through telephone surveys, t-tests and logit regression models were used to evaluate the data. The results reveal that an evacuation drill experience is positively related to making a decision to evacuate. The results also confirm that certain demographic factors, such as age and household size, as well as socio-economic factors, such as household income and housing type, influence evacuation decisions. Besides these, knowing the location of a shelter is another factor that improves the chances of evacuation. Finally, discussions and suggestions for increasing participation in evacuation drills are provided. Full article