Citation

Morales A, Alcarria R, Martin D, Robles T. Sensors (Basel) 2014; 14(6): 11153-11178.

Affiliation

Department of Telematics Engineering, Technical University of Madrid, Av. Complutense 30, Ciudad Universitaria, 28040 Madrid, Spain. trobles@dit.upm.es.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/s140611153

PMID

24961212

Abstract

Recent disasters have shown that having clearly defined preventive procedures and decisions is a critical component that minimizes evacuation hazards and ensures a rapid and successful evolution of evacuation plans. In this context, we present our Situation-Aware System for enhancing Evacuation Plans (SASEP) system, which allows creating end-user business rules that technically support the specific events, conditions and actions related to evacuation plans. An experimental validation was carried out where 32 people faced a simulated emergency situation, 16 of them using SASEP and the other 16 using a legacy system based on static signs. From the results obtained, we compare both techniques and discuss in which situations SASEP offers a better evacuation route option, confirming that it is highly valuable when there is a threat in the evacuation route. In addition, a study about user satisfaction using both systems is presented showing in which cases the systems are assessed as satisfactory, relevant and not frustrating.

Language: en