Visual analysis of situationally aware building evacuations

Rapid evacuation of large urban structures (campus buildings, arenas, stadiums, etc.) is a complex operation and of prime interest to emergency responders and planners. Although there is a considerable body of work in evacuation algorithms and methods, most of these are impractical to use in real-world scenarios (non realtime, for instance) or have difficulty handling scenarios with dynamically changing conditions. Our goal in this work is towards developing computer visualizations and real-time visual analytic tools for building evacuations, in order to provide situational awareness and decision support to first responders and emergency planners. We have augmented traditional evacuation algorithms in the following important ways, (1) facilitate real-time complex user interaction with first responder teams, as information is received during an emergency, (2) visual reporting tools for spatial occupancy, temporal cues, and procedural recommendations are provided automatically and at adjustable levels, and (3) multi-scale building models, heuristic evacuation models, and unique graph manipulation techniques for producing near real-time situational awareness. We describe our system, methods and their application using campus buildings as an example. We also report the results of evaluating our system in collaboration with our campus police and safety personnel, via a table-top exercise consisting of 3 different scenarios, and their resulting assessment of the system.