Emergency response, navigation, and evacuation are key essentials for effective rescue and safety management. Situational awareness is a key ingredient when fire responders or emergency response personnel responds to an emergency. They have to quickly assess the layout of a building or a campus upon entry. Moreover, the occupants of a building or campus also need situational awareness for navigation and emergency response. We have developed an integrated situational awareness mobile augmented reality (AR) application for smart campus planning, management, and emergency response. Through the visualization of integrated geographic information systems and real-time data analysis, our mobile application provides insights into operational implications and offers information to support effective decision-making. Using existing building features, the authors demonstrate how the mobile AR application provides contextualized 3D visualizations that promote and support spatial knowledge acquisition and cognitive mapping thereby enhancing situational awareness. A limited user study was conducted to test the effectiveness of the proposed mobile AR application using the mobile phone usability questionnaire (MPUQ) framework. The results show that the mobile AR application was relatively easy to use and that it can be considered a useful application for navigation and evacuation.
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Spatial Analysis and Visual Communication of Emergency Information through Augmented Reality
During emergencies like fire and smoke or active shooter events, there is a need to address the vulnerability and assess plans for evacuation. With the recent improvements in technology for smartphones, there is an opportunity for geo-visual environments that offer experiential learning by providing spatial analysis and visual communication of emergency-related information to the user. This paper presents the development and evaluation of the mobile augmented reality application (MARA) designed specifically for acquiring spatial analysis, situational awareness, and visual communication. The MARA incorporates existing permanent features such as room numbers and signages in the building as markers to display the floor plan of the building and show navigational directions to the exit. Through visualization of integrated geographic information systems and real-time data analysis, MARA provides the current location of the person, the number of exits, and user-specific personalized evacuation routes. The paper also describes a limited user study that was conducted to assess the usability and effectiveness of the MARA application using the widely recognized System Usability Scale (SUS) framework. The results show the effectiveness of our situational awareness-based MARA in multilevel buildings for evacuations, educational, and navigational purposes.
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- PAR ID:
- 10544798
- Publisher / Repository:
- Journal of Imaging Science and Technology
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Imaging Science and Technology
- Volume:
- 67
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 1943-3522
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 9
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.2352/J.ImagingSci.Technol.2023.67.6.060401
