Evacuation plan assessment system for universities

Earthquakes are one of the most fatal disasters in Japan. In preparation for them, each organization has to create its evacuation plan of their buildings. For universities, creating effective evacuation plans is worth challenging since they have many constraints on class schedules, class sizes, room sizes, room equipment, and so on; and the number of students and instructors in each room varies from time to time. However, it is not realistic to have many evacuation plans corresponding to various situations. In addition, it is difficult for universities to have specialists for developing evacuation plans, and administrative staff are not skilled in such planning. Our project is to create an evacuation planning system helpful for non-specialists. As a first step, an analyzing engine is developed. It reads information about building structures and classes, and estimates the flows of links such as passages and stairs when class time is specified. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.