A Proposal for Situation-Aware Evacuation Guidance Based on Semantic Technologies

Abstract

Smart Cities require reliable means for managing installations that offer essential services to the citizens. In this paper we focus on the problem of evacuation of smart buildings in case of emergencies. In particular, we present a proposal for an evacuation guidance system that provides individualized evacuation support to people in case of emergencies. The system uses sensor technologies and Complex Event Processing to obtain information about the current situation of a building in each moment. Using semantic Web technologies, this information is merged with static knowledge (special user characteristics, building topology, evacuation knowledge) in order to determine (and dynamically update) the most appropriate individualized evacuation routes for each user.