Generalized Stochastic Petri Net Based Simulation of IoT Supported Dynamic Navigation in Teaching Building Evacuation

Emergency management and evacuation efficiency is important to ensure the safety of faculty and students in college. Teaching buildings are typically of multiple stories. When classes are in session, a teaching building may have a large number of students inside. In case of an event like a fire, people have to be evacuated as soon as possible. Due to panic, people may not use good judgement to choose optimal evacuation path, which can further cause congestion in a path to an exit. This study attempts to leverage the recent advances in information technology to dynamically guide evacuees. We use generalized stochastic Petri nets (GSPN) to model the evacuation process in a teaching building. The layout of the building, sizes of classrooms and hallways, number of people in each room, and people's decision pattern in choosing a direction to move are all parameters of the model. With simulation we can estimate the evacuation time-span. Moreover, by observing the state of GSPN model, we can analyze the congestion status of each simulated pathway, and based on that we can dynamically notify people to select the right path that lead them to an exit with the least amount of time.