Measuring the exitability of buildings: A new perspective on indoor accessibility

Abstract

In the last decades, geographers' attention has been drawn to the vertical dimension of space and indoor environments due to population growth and concomitant city expansion. While traditional geography has long studied merely horizontal relationships of spatial processes and phenomena, recent years have also witnessed a growing number of studies that have sought to extend traditional spatial analysis tools to three-dimensional and indoor environments. In line with these developments, this paper proposes a new indoor accessibility measure which quantifies the quality of access to exits, called exitability. In this, the movement of people with respect to its three-dimensional environment, the user characteristics and the surrounding occupant interactions is considered key. Since the accessibility of exits is most important during evacuations, the calculation of exitability uses existing evacuation flow models. In a case study, we demonstrate the usefulness of exitability measurements through an application on existing building data.

Evaluating suitability of the least risk path algorithm to support cognitive wayfinding in indoor spaces: An empirical study

“…using complex intersections, avoiding main walking areas) in terms of what an unfamiliar indoor wayfinder would need, to navigate a building comfortably. To date, few researchers have attempted to approach algorithms for indoor routing differently, for example incorporating dynamic events (Musliman et al, 2008), or modelling evacuation situations (Atila et al, 2013;Vanclooster et al, 2012). In contrast, for outdoor environments, several 'cognitive' algorithms (e.g.…”

Enhanced 3D visualization techniques in support of indoor location planning

“…Work by Kwan and Lee (2005), Lee and Kwan (2005), Meijers, Zlatanova, and Preifer (2005), Lee (2007), Vanclooster, De Maeyer, Fack, Van de Weghe, and Neutens (2012), Isikdag, Zlatanova, and Underwood (2013), Kim, Kang, and Lee (2014) and others is primarily geared towards the development of data models enabling such functionality. Personal movement within indoor spaces with or without explicit consideration for indoor way-finding or navigation has been the primary purpose of some other data models (e.g., Li, Claramunt, & Ray, 2010;Mandloi & Thill, 2010;Thill et al, 2011;Vanclooster et al, 2012), while cadastral considerations have led to yet another strand of literature (e.g., Billen & Zlatanova, 2003 There is a very limited body of literature on optimal location modeling for 3D indoor environments in spite of cities being increasingly removed from two-dimensional (2D) graph representations due to their vertical expansion. Notable exceptions include Arriola, Laporte, and Ortega (2005) and Dao, Zhou, Thill, and Delmelle (2012) in facility location planning and Plets et al (2012) and Wölfle, Wahl, Wertz, Wildbolz, and Landstorfer (2005) in wireless network planning.…”

Three‐dimensional indoor network accessibility auditing for floor plan design

“…However, research on intelligent tools that can assist designers to achieve high accessibility, particularly for large and complex buildings, is still embryonic. Existing work often focuses on evaluating the accessibility of already built indoor spaces for the purpose of routing (Church & Marston, ; Kalakou & Moura, ; Sakkas & Pérez, ; Slingsby & Longley, ; Worboys, ), wayfinding (Hölscher, Brösamle, & Vrachliotis, ; Hölscher, Meilinger, Vrachliotis, Brösamle, & Knauff, ), emergency response (Vanclooster, De Maeyer, Fack, & Van de Weghe, ; Vanclooster, Neutens, Fack, Van de Weghe, & De Maeyer, ; VanLandegen & Chen, ), or indoor facility allocation (Dao, Zhou, Thill, & Delmelle, ), while little attention has been paid to practical tools that would enhance the effectiveness of the design process to construct a highly accessible built environment. Our main objective here is to demonstrate the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)‐based data models and indoor traversable network accessibility analysis as an approach to understand how building users move throughout the interior spaces of a building in order to evaluate and improve floor plan designs.…”