Disasters (e.g. earthquakes) and emergencies (e.g. fire) threaten the safety of occupants in the buildings and cause injuries and mortalities. These harmful effects are even more dangerous when secondary hazards (e.g. post-earthquake fires) emerge and it is commonly observed that the disasters/emergencies trigger secondary hazards.An effective indoor emergency guidance and navigation approach for occupants and first responders can decrease the number of injuries and mortalities during building emergencies by improving the evacuation process and response operations. For this reason, this research will propose a model-based guidance and vulnerability assessment approach for facilities that are under the threat of multi-hazard emergencies. The approach can be used to guide occupants from the facility affected by disasters/emergencies to safer zones and to direct the first responders by supplying them necessary building related information such as identified vulnerable locations in the indoor environments. An integrated utilization of Building Information Modeling tools, sensors, shortest path algorithms, and vulnerability assessment algorithms is proposed for the system in this research.
The research steps of this thesis include (1) determination of requirements of an indoor navigation during emergency response and disaster management,(2) review, comparison, and evaluation of shortest path algorithms from an emergency response and disaster management point of view, (3) proposing a vulnerability assessment approach, and (4) proposing a real-time indoor emergency guidance and navigation system framework for buildings under the threat of multi-hazard emergencies. The findings of the research can be used in future studies on emergency response and disaster management domains.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12614534/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 July 2012 |
| Creators | Ayhan, Murat |
| Contributors | Birgonul, Mustafa Talat |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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