UCAmI 2013 Costa Rica · December 2-6

E-Flow: A communication system for user notification in dynamic evacuation scenarios

Augusto Morales Technical University of Madrid

Picture by David Gordillo

The Evacuation Problem

• The evacuation analysis is a long-studied problem.

• There are Route modeling systems, decision support systems, middlewares, WSN and so on.

• There are several gaps of current evacuation plans regarding the way users perceive the information and are aware of the situation

2

Building and evacuation plan including the user perspective

• Nowadays, there many solutions that indeed permit WSN environments to provide information in evacuation situations.

• Nevertheless, there are other challenges , more related to the human factor, such as: – reducing the reaction time of

personnel, – reducing the interpretation time, – providing easy interaction mechanisms

and – Providing dynamic signaling.

3

How to improve the chances of survival from the user

perpective?

To offer better information awareness!

Communication System for Dynamic evacuation scenarios

Users Safety staff

Emergency Response Teams

M2M Sensors/Actuators/

Signalling

H2M Communication Capabilities

Communication Infraestructure

Our solution is the Eflow system

Local Network

Infraestructure

Pub/Sub

Client

MQTT

Client

XMPP

Servers

Mobile

Safety Staff

Emergency

Response Teams

Faculty and

Students

subscribe()

publish()

802.15

Sensors

Proxy

MQTT-to-Web

Remote Networks

Mobile

Broker

Concentrators

Wi-fisubscribe()

publish()

WSN

Wi-fi

MQTT

Brokers

The BIG Picture of the E-Flow system

Messaging Capabilities

User Awareness

E-Flow Implementation

Concentrator

MQTT Client

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)

SensorsSensors

TemperatureTemperature

HumidityHumidity

Evacuation

signalEvacuation

signal

Node 2Node 4 Node 3 Node 5Node 1

(Central Node)

Usb

ActuatorActuator

Integration of Sensor/Actuators

Design from scratch - low-power OMAPL127 (DSP+ARM) of TI - 802.15.4 - PSOC3 of Cypress Semiconductor - USB battery re-chargable - Connected with Linux (Montavista) - Sensors: presence, humidity, Temperature, luminance

Web-based application Mobile Application (Android)

- Nodejs. Websockets-MQTT - Openfire. XMPP - Mosquitto MQTT broker - Android (asmack, Alljoyn)

E-Flow Deployment

First Deployment at the Telecommunication School (UPM)

Second Deployment at Hospital de San José (Carabanchel, Madrid)

Second Deployment at Hospital de San Pastor (Carabanchel, Madrid)

results

End-to-End MQTT-to-Web using Websockets

Pub/Sub Network MQTT only

Mean Median SD Mean Median SD

a) Fixed devices

30,977 29,770 1,056 4,740 4,515 0,904

b) Mobile devices

246,983 250,989 11,893 65,904 66,938 4,111

c) Proxy Delay

4.402 4.520 0.830 - - -

Does the E-flow system provides acceptable user awareness levels?

We have checked the normality of the three samples with the Shapiro-Wilk normality test [23] and conclude that the three samples came from a Normal distribution (p-value <= 0.05).

User experience and awareness are still acceptable for mobile cases. This affirmation is based on the work of Jacob et al., which states that delays less than 1.0 seconds need no special feedback.

summary

E-flow system provides user awareness

Local Network

Infraestructure

Pub/Sub

Client

MQTT

Client

XMPP

Servers

Mobile

Safety Staff

Emergency

Response Teams

Faculty and

Students

subscribe()

publish()

802.15

Sensors

Proxy

MQTT-to-Web

Remote Networks

Mobile

Broker

Concentrators

Wi-fisubscribe()

publish()

WSN

Wi-fi

MQTT

Brokers

future work

stronger experimentation

Better WSN Integration

Integrate decision support system

UCAmI 2013 Costa Rica · December 2-6

E-Flow: A communication system for user notification in dynamic evacuation scenarios

Augusto Morales Technical University of Madrid

Picture by David Gordillo