Real-time Intelligent Exit Path Indicator Using BLE Beacon Enabled Emergency Exit Sign Controller

Abstract

Emergency lights and exit signs are an indispensable part of safety precautions for effective evacuation in case of emergency in public buildings. These emergency sign indicates safe escape routes and emergency doors, using an internationally recognizable sign. However visibility of those signs drops drastically in case of emergency situations like fire smoke, etc. and loss of visibility causes serious problems for safety evacuation. This paper propose a novel emergency light and exit sign built-in with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Beacon to assist the emergency self-guiding evacuation using devices for crisis and emergency management to avoid panic condition inside the buildings. In this approach, the emergency light and exit sign with the BLE beacons deployed in the indoor environments and the smart devices detect their indoor positions, direction to move, and next exit sign position from beacon messages and interact with map server in the Internet / Intranet over the available LTE and/or Wi-Fi network connectivity. The map server generate an optimal emergency exit path according to the nearest emergency exit based on a novel graph generation method for less route computation for each smart device. All emergency exit path data interfaces among three system components, the emergency exit signs, map server, and smart devices, have been defined for modular implementation of our emergency evacuation system. The proposed exit sign experimental system has been deployed and evaluated in real-time building environment thoroughly and gives a good evidence that the modular design of the proposed exit sign system and a novel approach to compute emergency exit path route based on the BLE beacon message, map server, and smart devices is competitive and viable.