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1. Situational Awareness-based Augmented Reality Instructional (ARI) Module for Building Evacuation

   https://doi.org/10.1109/VRW50115.2020.00020  

   Sharma, Sharad ; Stigall, James ; Bodempudi, Sri Teja ( March 2020 , 2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW))

   Emergency response in indoor building evacuation is essential for effective rescue and safety management. First responders often lack the situational awareness capability to quickly assess the layout of a building upon initial entry. For occupants of the building, situational awareness becomes more important in cases of active shooter events or circumstances of fire and smoke. One of the challenges is to provide user-specific personalized evacuation routes in real-time. In multilevel building environments, the complexity of the architecture creates problems for both visual and mental representation of the 3D spaces. This paper presents three cutting edge Augmented Reality Instructional (ARI) modules that overcome the visual limitations associated with the traditional, static 2D methods of communicating evacuation plans for multilevel buildings. Using existing building features, the authors demonstrate how the three modules provide contextualized 3D visualizations that promote and support spatial knowledge acquisition and cognitive mapping thereby enhancing situational awareness. These ARI visualizations are developed for first responders and building occupants to help increase emergency preparedness and mitigate the evacuation related risks in multilevel building rescues and safety management. Specifically, the paper describes the design and implementation of the ARI modules and reports the results of the pilot studies conducted to evaluate their perceived usefulness, ease-of-use, and usability. The results suggest the desirability of further heuristic examination of three-dimensional situational awareness-based ARI application effectiveness in multilevel building evacuations. 

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2. Identifying anomalous behavior in a building using HoloLens for emergency response

   https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2470-1173.2020.13.ERVR-224  

   Sharma, Sharad ; Bodempudi, Sri Teja ; Scribner, David ( August 2020 , Electronic Imaging)

   During emergencies communicating in multi-level built environment becomes challenging because architectural complexity can create problems with visual and mental representation of 3D space. Our Hololens application gives a visual representation of a building on campus in 3D space, allowing people to see where exits are in the building as well as creating alerts for anomalous behavior for emergency response such as active shooter, fire, and smoke. It also gives path to the various exits; shortest path to the exits as well as directions to a safe zone from their current position. The augmented reality (AR) application was developed in Unity 3D for Microsoft HoloLens and also is deployed on tablets and smartphones. It is a fast and robust marker detection technique inspired by the use of Vuforia AR library. Our aim is to enhance the evacuation process by ensuring that all building patrons know all of the building exits and how to get to them, which improves evacuation time and eradicates the injuries and fatalities occurring during indoor crises such as building fires and active shooter events. We have incorporated existing permanent features in the building as markers for the AR application to trigger the floor plan and subsequent location of the person in the building. This work also describes the system architecture as well as the design and implementation of this AR application to leverage HoloLens for building evacuation purposes. We believe that AR technologies like HoloLens could be adopted for all building evacuating strategies during emergencies as it offers a more 

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3. Integrating storm surge modeling with traffic data analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of hurricane evacuation

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11709-021-0765-1  

   Huang, Wenrui ; Yin, Kai ; Ghorbanzadeh, Mahyar ; Ozguven, Eren ; Xu, Sudong ; Vijayan, Linoj ( December 2021 , Frontiers of Structural and Civil Engineering)

   Abstract An integrated storm surge modeling and traffic analysis were conducted in this study to assess the effectiveness of hurricane evacuations through a case study of Hurricane Irma. The Category 5 hurricane in 2017 caused a record evacuation with an estimated 6.8 million people relocating statewide in Florida. The Advanced Circulation (ADCIRC) model was applied to simulate storm tides during the hurricane event. Model validations indicated that simulated pressures, winds, and storm surge compared well with observations. Model simulated storm tides and winds were used to estimate the area affected by Hurricane Irma. Results showed that the storm surge and strong wind mainly affected coastal counties in south-west Florida. Only moderate storm tides (maximum about 2.5 m) and maximum wind speed about 115 mph were shown in both model simulations and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) post-hurricane assessment near the area of hurricane landfall. Storm surges did not rise to the 100-year flood elevation level. The maximum wind was much below the design wind speed of 150–170 mph (Category 5) as defined in Florida Building Code (FBC) for south Florida coastal areas. Compared with the total population of about 2.25 million in the six coastal counties affected by storm surge and Category 1–3 wind, the statewide evacuation of approximately 6.8 million people was found to be an over-evacuation due mainly to the uncertainty of hurricane path, which shifted from south-east to south-west Florida. The uncertainty of hurricane tracks made it difficult to predict the appropriate storm surge inundation zone for evacuation. Traffic data were used to analyze the evacuation traffic patterns. In south-east Florida, evacuation traffic started 4 days before the hurricane’s arrival. However, the hurricane path shifted and eventually landed in south-west Florida, which caused a high level of evacuation traffic in south-west Florida. Over-evacuation caused Evacuation Traffic Index ( ETI ) to increase to 200% above normal conditions in some sections of highways, which reduced the effectiveness of evacuation. Results from this study show that evacuation efficiency can be improved in the future by more accurate hurricane forecasting, better public awareness of real-time storm surge and wind as well as integrated storm surge and evacuation modeling for quick response to the uncertainty of hurricane forecasting. 

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4. Anomalous human activity fluctuations from digital trace data signal flood inundation status

   https://doi.org/10.1177/23998083211069990  

   Farahmand, Hamed ; Wang, Wanqiu ; Mostafavi, Ali ; Maron, Mikel ( September 2022 , Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science)

   The emergence of mobile platforms equipped with Global Positioning System technology enables real-time data collection affording opportunities for mining data applicable to rapid flood inundation assessment. The collected data can be employed to complement existing methods for rapid flood inundation assessment, such as remote sensing, to enhance situational awareness. In particular, telemetry-based digital trace data related to human activity have intrinsic advantages to be used for inundation assessment. In this study, we investigate the use of Mapbox telemetry data, which provides human activity indices with high spatial and temporal resolutions, for application in rapid flood inundation assessment. Using data from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 in Harris County, Texas, we (1) study anomalous fluctuations in human activities and analyze the differences in activity level between inundated and non-inundated areas and (2) investigate changes in the concentration of human activity, to explore the disruption of human activity as an indicator of flood inundation. Results show that both analyses can provide valuable rapid insights regarding flood inundation status. Anomalous activities can be significantly higher/lower in flooded areas compared with non-flooded areas. Also, the concentration of human activity during the flood propagation period across affected watersheds can be observed. This study contributes to the state of knowledge in smart flood resilience by investigating the application of ubiquitous telemetry-based digital trace data to enhance rapid flood inundation assessment. Accordingly, the use of such digital trace data could provide emergency managers and public officials with valuable insights to inform impact evaluation and response actions. 

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5. Impact of Immersive Training on Senior Chemical Engineering Students' Prioritization of Process Safety Decision Criteria

   Stransky, J. ( July 2021 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   Process safety is becoming a greater focus of chemical plant design and operation due to the number of incidents involving dangerous chemical accidents. Since its creation nearly 20 years ago, the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has investigated 130 safety incidents and provided over 800 safety recommendations to operating chemical facilities. Following a gas well blowout in 2018, the CSB gave a recommendation to the American Petroleum Institute (API) to establish recommended practice on alarm management. Similarly, in 2017, the CSB gave a recommendation to Arkema Inc. to update their emergency response training following a hurricane that caused a fire at one of their manufacturing sites. Many times, CSB-led investigations resulted in new regulations and standards that are enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These critical recommendations positively impact not only the plant workers but also the surrounding community and the environment. While these safety measures enhance industrial safety culture, it is important that process safety also be integrated into university-level engineering curricula to promote safety culture while future engineers are still developing. Integrating process safety into the curriculum prepares students by familiarizing them with the difficult decisions they will be required to make in professional practice. ABET, the engineering program accreditation body, acknowledges the value of early, appropriate training within their program guidelines “Criteria for Chemical Engineering Curriculum” which states that recognition and assessment of the hazards associated with chemical processes must be included in the curriculum for program accreditation. Based on this requirement, many institutions have taken the approach to integrate process safety into their curriculum using video case studies, adding entire courses to cover hazard identification, and including safety lectures in design courses. A common theme missing from these methods is instruction on how to approach, recognize, and navigate decisions within a process safety context; a lack of this situational awareness was noted as a key element in industrial process safety incidents. Understanding how students approach process safety decisions is important for developing teaching methods and curriculum that will better prepare them for professional practice. As part of this study, we will measure how students rank criteria associated with process safety decisions, and how these prioritizations change after exposure to a process safety decision making intervention. Through this work, we hope to determine how process safety curriculum may be improved to help better prepare students for process safety decisions within industry. 

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