An Ontological Model for Fire Evacuation Route Recommendation in Buildings

Abstract

Guiding the occupants of a building to a safe place is an area of research that deserves the attention of researchers. Finding solutions for the problem of guiding the building occupants requires a perfect knowledge of the fire building evacuation domain. The use of ontologies to model the knowledge of a domain allows a common and shared understanding of that domain. This paper presents an ontology that has the purpose to deepen the understanding of that domain and help develop building evacuation solutions and systems capable of guiding the occupants during a building evacuation process. The proposed ontology considers the different variables and actors involved in the fire building evacuation process. The ontology development followed the Methontology methodology, and for implementation, the Protégé tool was used. The ontological model was successfully submitted to a thorough evaluation process and is publicly available on the Web.

Guiding Evacuees to Improve Fire Building Evacuation Efficiency: Hazard and Congestion Models to Support Decision Making by a Context-Aware Recommender System

“…These evacuation routes are reflected in the building's emergency plan and construction by installing the respective emergency signage. The ontologies presented in [24,25] propose knowledge models that allow for a better understanding of the evacuation of buildings in case of fire. In [25], the author presents an ontological model to support the development of solutions and systems capable of guiding the occupants of a building on their way out of the building, i.e., during phase 3 of the previously identified evacuation process.…”

“…So, in the scope of this paper, context is defined as the information that, at each moment, allows the characterisation of the building's evacuation routes and the interaction with the building occupants. The ontological model developed by [25] considers that contextual information is constructed from the data obtained by the different IoT input devices installed in the building, be they IoT sensors of different types or fire detection systems. This construction process of contextual information characterising the building environment is shown in Figure 2, which is obtained from the ontology proposed by [25].…”

“…The ontological model developed by [25] considers that contextual information is constructed from the data obtained by the different IoT input devices installed in the building, be they IoT sensors of different types or fire detection systems. This construction process of contextual information characterising the building environment is shown in Figure 2, which is obtained from the ontology proposed by [25].…”

“…The ontological model developed by [25] considers that contextual information is constructed from the data obtained by the different IoT input devices installed in the building, be they IoT sensors of different types or fire detection systems. This construction process of contextual information characterising the building environment is shown in Figure 2, which is obtained from the ontology proposed by [25]. Based on the contextual information obtained through IoT, it is possible to build a solution capable of providing the building's occupants with updated information on safe evacuation routes, ensuring greater efficiency in building evacuation.…”

Context-Based Multi-Agent Recommender System, Supported on IoT, for Guiding the Occupants of a Building in Case of a Fire

“…In this sense, an ontology for the evacuation of buildings under fire emergency [60] was created first, which allows us to clarify and consolidate the knowledge on the referred domain. In a second phase, based on the ontology mentioned above, an ontological model for the recommendation of evacuation routes in buildings under fire emergency [61] was developed, whose graphic representation is shown in Figure 1. The graphical representation of Figure 1 highlights two blocks of classes interconnected by the IoT.…”