- Title
- Directional navigation improves opportunistic communication for emergencies
- Creator
- Kokuti, Andras; Gelenbe, Erol
- Relation
- Sensors Vol. 14, Issue 8, p. 15387-15399
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s140815387
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2014
- Description
- We present a novel direction based shortest path search algorithm to guide evacuees during an emergency. It uses opportunistic communications (oppcomms) with low-cost wearable mobile nodes that can exchange packets at close range of a few to some tens of meters without help of an infrastructure. The algorithm seeks the shortest path to exits which are safest with regard to a hazard, and is integrated into an autonomous Emergency Support System (ESS) to guide evacuees in a built environment. The algorithm proposed that ESSs are evaluated with the DBES (Distributed Building Evacuation Simulator) by simulating a shopping centre where fire is spreading. The results show that the directional path finding algorithm can offer significant improvements for the evacuees.
- Subject
- emergency navigation; opportunistic communications; building evacuation; self organization
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1356878
- Identifier
- uon:31813
- Identifier
- ISSN:1424-8220
- Rights
- Copyright 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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