Spatiotemporal routing analysis for emergency response in indoor space

Geospatial research on emergency response in multi-level micro-spatial environments (e.g., multi-story buildings) that aims at understanding and analyzing human movements at the micro level has increased considerably since 9/11. Past research has shown that reducing the time rescuers needed to reach a disaster site within a building (e.g., a particular room) can have a significant impact on evacuation and rescue outcomes in this kind of disaster situations. With the purpose developing emergency response systems that are capable of using complex real-time geospatial information to generate fast-changing scenarios, this study develops a Spatiotemporal Optimal Route Algorithm (SORA) for guiding rescuers to move quickly from various entrances of a building to the disaster site (room) within the building. It identifies the optimal route and building evacuation bottlenecks within the network in real-time emergency situations. It is integrated with a Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) based tracking system in order to monitor dynamic geospatial entities, including the dynamic capacities and flow rates of hallways per time period. Because of the limited scope of this study, the simulated data were used to implement the SORA and evaluate its effectiveness for performing 3D topological analysis. The study shows that capabilities to take into account detailed dynamic geospatial data about emergency situations, including changes in evacuation status over time, are essential for emergency response systems.