Evacuation from buildings during emergencies is a serious issue for all citizens. For the disabled, the problem is compounded by a number of factors, such as nature of disability, size and complexity of the building, type of emergency, etc. While the law requires emergency evacuation plans for public buildings, these plans are generally not adequate for the disabled occupant. In the current work, we take a preliminary look at systems to aid blind and visually impaired persons safely exit a building during such events as natural disasters and fires.
Natural disasters, while not being common, have a bothersome quality - unpredictability. Even hurricanes, which we track on television for days or weeks, often change course at the last minute hitting areas not in their projected track. Other emergencies give little to no warning before striking. San Francisco is certainly no stranger to these types of natural disasters. The 1906 earthquake and resulting fires are a classic case of dealing with the unexpected. Interestingly, of the 3,000 people that died in this disaster, the vast majority were not the victims of the earthquake, but rather the fires that followed.
For the majority of society, mandated evacuation plans are adequate, but for the disabled the efficacy of these plans is dubious. If disaster occurs during business hours, help for the disabled can be offered by appointed relief personnel. Off-hour evacuation is a different story. Just consider a late night fire in a high-rise apartment building. If you are either visually impaired (in smoke-filled buildings, everyone is visually impaired) the situation is complicated by an order of magnitude. Elevators usage is restricted, emergency lighting while still functional is of little value and little to no help available from human evacuation monitors. Further, given several evacuation routes, today’s systems are normally not able to guide people to the “safest” exit.
The problems stated above, are not solved by current alarm/evacuation systems. We invite user groups, ploicy makers, researchers and experts to report on
- ongoing research
- ideas and concepts for technical support
- accessibility of mainstream systems
- evaluation of existing systems
- best practice
- ...
and in particular how ICT could path the way to better solutions.
Interested attendees should join in a group discussion of these issues and the technologies needed to solve this problem.
Chair
Art Karshmer
University of San Francisco, akarshmer@usfca.edu