This research was conducted in the scope of the European integration project with title “A holistic, scenario-independent, situation-awareness and guidance system for sustaining the Active Evacuation Route for large crowds”, with acronym eVACUATE. The goal of the eVACUATE project is the development of an evacuation assistance tool for mass gathering venues (e.g. soccer stadiums, metro stations, airports, cruise ships, etc.), that fuses the information coming from different sensor technologies, and in case of an emergency, provides to the crisis managers and first responders with a total situation- awareness of the crowds’ behavior. If The crisis managers deem necessary to trigger the evacuation procedure, the evacuation tool provides the crowd by mean of its different sensors with the optimal evacuation routes to leave the premises in a timely and safely manner [10].
The eVACUATE framework overview diagram can be seen in Fig. 1.1, it is mainly composed of four key elements: smart spaces, crowd models, simulation tools, and the decision center. The Smart spaces are implemented including different types of sensors and cameras, they feed the system with enough information to assess the venue’s
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infrastructure condition and analyze the crowd behavior using the crowd models. If a triggering event is detected, like an abnormal crowd behavior or a physical event that compromises the venue’s or people’s integrity, the system sends an alarm to the crisis managers located at the decision center. The crisis managers evaluate the situation and decide whether an evacuation procedure must be triggered or not, if they decide to do so, the system assess with the help of the simulation tool, the most optimal evacuation routes to timely guide the crowd safely out of danger, avoiding possible crowd congestion scenarios [10].
For the realization of the project, several partners were involved in the development of different technologies and tasks. The tasks and technologies per project partner are briefly described in the following list [10]:
EXODUS S.A., Greece, overall project management
University of Southampton, IT Innovation Centre, Great Britain, lead the crowd behavior detection and recognition in crisis situations models, study of crowd psychology and typology of behaviors, develop and implement crowd behavior recognition tools
Institute of Communications and Computer Systems, Greece, lead the communication and adaptive interfaces implementation, carry out the system communications and network architectures deployment
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HKV, The Netherlands, lead the definitions of evacuation scenarios and user/system requirements, as well as the evaluation of the system demonstrations Telesto Technologies, Greece, develop and implement the wireless sensor networks, mobile application, and positioning system for people location assessments
TEKNIKER-Ik4, Spain, lead the smart spaces implementation, process the data to generate comprehensive information, and develop the exit signs
Athens International Airport, Greece, provide expertise regarding the security and evacuation issues at airport facilities, and the use of its premises for the project system validation
Vitrociset, Italy, lead the decision making and optimal evacuation strategy, as well as the dissemination and exploitation activities. Set the decision rules according to the specific scenarios at the different venues and the information coming from the smart devices
Crowd Dynamics International, Great Britain, model and simulate the crowd behavior, determine the optimum evacuation routes for the different venues and evacuation scenarios
INDRA, Spain, lead the framework design and system integration, adapt the smart objects for intelligent applications (SOFIA) interoperability platform to eVACUATE and manage the database
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, formulate the legal requirements for eVACUATE
DIGINEXT, France, develop the three dimensional (3D) interactive common operational picture system and iterative simulation of evacuation scenarios Politecnico Di Torino – Department of Mathematics, Italy, identify real-time
crowd modelling techniques of crowd behavior
STX France S.A., France, provide expertise regarding the security and evacuation issues at cruise ship facilities, and the use of cruise ships for the project system validation
Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, designs the chipless RFID transponder’s architecture. Conducts performance tests, reader
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development/programming and overall RFID system integration to the framework
Technische Universität Chemnitz, Germany, manufacturing of the printed RFID transponders and development of roll-to-roll printing technology
Real Sociedad de Fútbol S.A.D., Spain, provide expertise regarding the security and evacuation issues at professional sport arenas, and the use of Anoeta soccer stadium for the project system validation
Metro Bilbao S.A., Spain, provide expertise regarding the security and evacuation issues at underground transportation facilities, and the use case of the Metro Bilbao stations for the project system validation
Telecom Italia, Italy, provide the necessary expertise/support for the implementation of the resilient communications and adaptive interfaces, system demonstrations, ethics, and mobile positioning
In the case an evacuation procedure is started, it becomes imperative to guarantee that all the endangered persons leave safely the facilities. To do so, the system must keep track and count of all the people located inside the premises by all available technological means. Moreover, it shall be able to subtract the number of persons leaving through the evacuation routes from the total count and calculate whether people are still left behind or not. Thus, an RFID system becomes a feasible solution to perform this specific task. However, the venues where the system shall be implemented, are mass gathering places, most of them with high traffic and continuous dynamic movement of people, entering and leaving confined rooms, staying only for a short period of time. Therefore, the implementation of a conventional RFID system could become very costly, infrastructure and logistic demanding, and the need to exploit the deployment of a low-cost RFID system with chipless transponders becomes evident, with the capability to be integrated, at no major cost, in the already existing venue’s respective access tickets or cards systems [10].
The proposed RFID system with chipless transponders, foresees the use of roll-to- roll printing technology to fully integrate the chipless RFID transponders on paper or foil, allowing its implementation on the already existing venue’s ticketing system, and the counting of people passing through predefined checkpoints (emergency exits), as shown in Fig. 1.1.
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Fig. 1.2 shows the RFID system with chipless transponders overview, it consists of three major components:
1. Chipless RFID transponders, which are printed on the venue’s tickets to be identified.
2. RFID reader, that sends the RF signal to interrogate the chipless RFID transponder and retrieve its stored identifying information.
3. Data processing subsystem associates the chipless RFID transponder stored data with arbitrary records, namely the name or picture of object to be identified and keeps count of the amount of tickets passing through the checkpoints.
The RFID system with chipless transponders can be integrated to the eVACUATE framework either by means of a local area network (LAN) or a wireless local area network (WLAN).
A set of specifications has been defined for the operation of the RFID system with chipless transponders:
1. Number of bits: represents the quantity of items that can be distinguished, the aim is to be able to code at least 3 bits, which means a minimum of 8 different objects can be recognized.
2. Coverage range: determines the maximum distance at which the UWB chipless RFID transponders can be detected, a value of at least 1-meter range is specified as a target.
3. Power consumption: the necessary electrical energy over time to operate the chipless RFID transponder is set to zero.
Fig. 1.2: UWB RFID with chipless transponders system overview
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4. Lifetime: the duration of the chipless RFID transponder before its complete degradation hast to be greater than 3 months.
5. Cost: the chipless RFID transponder fabrication cost with roll-to-roll printing technology should round the 1 Eurocent per 30 cm2.
6. Simultaneous detection: the RFID system should be capable to simultaneous detect at least two chipless transponders.
7. License free operation: to allow the implementation in any part of the world, the RFID system must operate in an international reserved frequency band.