Integrating spatio-temporal data into agent-based simulation for emergency navigation support

Emergency navigation for first responders in changing disasters is a very complex task and creates a new set of challenges for researchers. A lot of research work on this direction has been done. Nevertheless, traditional navigation systems consider only one responder with a pair of start and end points and the considered obstacles in previous studies are static. Moreover, none of the previous work has investigated the added value of integration of the disaster simulation with emergency navigation system. The goal of the research is to support the navigation task for multiple first responders in disasters by introducing the agent-based modeling and simulation integrated with spatio-temporal data. The general problem we are going to address is “how to navigate multiple first responders to multiple locations avoiding multiple obstacles”. For our purpose, this PhD project will be conducted as follows. First of all, we are going to investigate novel approaches to help navigate multiple first responders to avoid multiple obstacles, including both static obstacles and moving obstacles. By incorporating predictions of obstacles, one is able to anticipate changes in the road network and take them into consideration in the route determination process. A?er that, we will take advantage of the developments in current disaster simulation technology and integrate the disaster simulation model corrected with real time data into our navigation system. A prototype integrated navigation system linked with database will be developed. Besides, to help first responders evaluate navigation results, an agent-based modeling and simulation system updated with real time measurements will be proposed