Gabriele Bernardini

An Experimental Study on the Correlation Between “Attachment to Belongings” “Pre-movement” Time

Many studies show that people carry out activities not directly connected with the evacuation after hearing a fire alarm. In this study we analyze the behavior of two groups of students in a Faculty of Engineering, following the activation of a fire alarm. The study shows that in these types of buildings, due to the fact that students are involved in activities with electronic devices, “pre-movement times” are very high and are strongly influenced by users’ attachment to their belongings. In particular this study allows the distribution of pre-movement time and the speed of people during the evacuation to be calculated.

Urban scenarios modifications due to the earthquake: ruins formation criteria and interactions with pedestrians' evacuation

One of the most influencing elements in inhabitants’ earthquake safety definition is represented by the interactions between people and post-event environment in urban scenarios. Understanding and simulating rules for pedestrians’ motion in earthquake evacuation could be useful to inquire the risk assessment introducing the “human” factor influence: integrated “risk maps” could be realized by combining results of similar analyses with the traditional site hazard, buildings vulnerability and exposition indices. This work proposes an innovative approach based on the analysis of these interactions. Two experimentally-based activities are required: an analysis of human behaviors towards the post-earthquake environment; a relation for defining environmental modifications. Results firstly show a summary of man-environment interactions in earthquake evacuations. A possible criterion for path choice in evacuation is also numerically defined. A theoretical agent-based model is developed on these bases and summarizes phases, motion rules and man-environment interactions in earthquake pedestrians’ evacuation in urban scenarios. Secondly, quick criteria for scenario modifications involving ruins formation are proposed and evaluated: for each building, the percentages of internal and external ruins area is a function of its vulnerability and the expected earthquake Richter magnitude. Moreover, the external ruins formation criterion is validated by comparing predicted and effective values of ruins area depth in real cases. The model could be proposed as a tool for evaluating probable pedestrians’ choices in post-event scenarios, in order to reduce the interferences between the built environment and the evacuation process through interventions on buildings, urban fabric and strategies for emergency management.

Multi-Agent Simulation Model for Evacuation of Care Homes and Hospitals for Elderly and People with Disabilities in Motion

The progressive population aging provokes an increase of importance in safety aspects for the elderly and the people with disabilities that are housed in care homes and hospitals. Current regulations denote an inadequate approach to safety problems connected to possible evacuation due to events like earthquakes, floods, fires. The law approach implicates that patients are directly carried out by health workers assistants in evacuation. However, many patients can autonomously evacuate, helped by specific facilities for way finding and not assisted by the medical staff. Our research is intended to design “guidance” system for these categories, and to inquiry how these facilities interact with people and influence their motion. The understanding and the simulation of behaviors of this category become essential in order to reach these goal. This work proposes a multi-agent model for evacuation simulation, based on the Social Force motion approach and on experimental data. This paper focuses on joining group behaviors for autonomous elderly. The validation concerns various quantities describing group motion phenomena. The model will be integrated including aspects connected with eventual disabilities in motion for patients.

New Indices for the Existing City-Centers Streets Network Reliability and Availability Assessment in Earthquake Emergency

ABSTRACT During earthquake emergencies in existing city-centers, streets network permits inhabitants to reach safe areas, and rescuers to access damaged zones and help population. However, the network can suffer from blocks due to debris of collapsed or heavily damaged buildings. Understanding urban fabric modifications and classifying elements vulnerability are fundamental steps while dealing with risk-assessment and risk-reduction strategies. This article offers a first quick approach for assessing seismic vulnerability of paths network by considering interferences with building heritage damages. Quick data about existing urban fabric (e.g., buildings typology; streets and buildings geometries) are combined for developing new vulnerability indices for streets network. The earthquake macroseismic intensity is introduced for evaluating probable street blockages and summarizing the overall rating of risks in critical network locations, thus intensity that is not included in other current quick methods for streets-building interference is here taken into account. Risk-reduction strategies based on the proposed indices could minimize the interventions on architectural heritage, maximizing the safety of evacuees. These new indices could be combined with traditional assessment of buildings vulnerability, and evaluations on pedestrians’ and vehicles evacuation flows, for evaluating management strategies.

Fire Safety and Building Heritage: The Occupants Perspective

Current regulations and approaches to fire safety seem to be generally characterized by a schematic and deterministic point of view, especially while dealing with Building Heritage. They generally consider how interventions on buildings could be enough for reducing people’s risk, because occupants would surely behave in the correct way. Hence, massive modifications to the original building layout can be adopted (limited, e.g., to increasing number and dimensions of egress paths), while effective man-environment and man-man emergency evacuation interactions are underestimated. Starting from this issue, this chapter firstly analyses main limitations of these approaches, by focusing on human behaviors during a fire, especially in case of emergencies in historical buildings. To this end, main aspects of both significant international and national regulations and literature studies on human fire evacuation behaviors are organized and reviewed. Hence, the importance of innovative strategies, such as the ones based on the Fire Safety Engineering approach, is discussed by mainly evidencing the fundamental impact of human behavior modeling as a new tool for designing and evaluating low-impact risk-reduction solutions.

How to simulate pedestrian behaviors in seismic evacuation for vulnerability reduction of existing buildings

Understanding and representing how individuals behave in earthquake emergencies would be essentially to assess the impact of vulnerability reduction strategies on existing buildings in seismic areas. In fact, interactions between individuals and the scenario (modified by the earthquake occurrence) are really important in order to understand the possible additional risks for people, especially during the evacuation phase. The current approach is based on “qualitative” aspects, in order to define best practice guidelines for Civil Protection and populations. On the contrary, a “quantitative” description of human response and evacuation motion in similar conditions is urgently needed. Hence, this work defines the rules for pedestrians’ earthquake evacuation in urban scenarios, by taking advantages of previous results of real-world evacuation analyses. In particular, motion laws for pedestrians is defined by modifying the Social Force model equation. The proposed model could be used for evaluating individuals’ evacuation process and so for defining operative strategies for interferences reduction in critical urban fabric parts (e.g.: interventions on particular buildings, evacuation strategies definition, city parts projects).Understanding and representing how individuals behave in earthquake emergencies would be essentially to assess the impact of vulnerability reduction strategies on existing buildings in seismic areas. In fact, interactions between individuals and the scenario (modified by the earthquake occurrence) are really important in order to understand the possible additional risks for people, especially during the evacuation phase. The current approach is based on “qualitative” aspects, in order to define best practice guidelines for Civil Protection and populations. On the contrary, a “quantitative” description of human response and evacuation motion in similar conditions is urgently needed. Hence, this work defines the rules for pedestrians’ earthquake evacuation in urban scenarios, by taking advantages of previous results of real-world evacuation analyses. In particular, motion laws for pedestrians is defined by modifying the Social Force model equation. The proposed model could be used for evaluating individuals...

Earthquake Emergencies Management by Means of Semantic-Based Internet of Things

Semantic technologies can play a key role in representing, storing, interconnecting, searching, and organizing information generated/consumed by things. In order to evaluate its feasibility, this paper presents a set of reasoning mechanisms based on an IoT ontology to be applied in an emergency management scenario. The scenario presented in this paper consists in the earthquake emergency management.

Flooding Pedestrians’ Evacuation in Historical Urban Scenario: A Tool for Risk Assessment Including Human Behaviors

In the future, safety in historical city centers will be significantly affected by climate change-related disasters, such as floods. Risk assessment in these scenarios requires the combination of a series of factors: possible events characterization; urban layout configuration, its influence on flooding spreading and induced environmental modification; human factor, especially during first emergency phases. Historic urban scenario features (e.g.: compact urban fabrics; position near floodplains; possible inefficient early warning systems) additionally increase individuals’ risks. According to a “behavioral design” approach, developing flood evacuation simulation tools would help safety designers in assessing population’s exposure and then in suggesting emergency strategies to help citizens during such hazardous phases. This paper proposes a flooding evacuation simulation tool, which jointly represents the individuals’ evacuation motion towards safe areas, and the floodwaters spreading in the urban scenario. In particular, the simulator is founded on previous literature results concerning emergency behaviors and motion quantities (e.g.: evacuation speed as function of floodwaters flow) and adopts an agent-based model architecture. A part of the historic city center of Senigallia, an Italian city that suffered a significant flood in 2014, is chosen as application case-study to show tool capabilities. Results outline risk levels for individuals, and evidence critical points (in the urban space and during the time) for man-floodwaters-environment interactions (e.g.: being swept away by floodwaters). By evaluating probable evacuees’ choices in different scenarios, the tool is proposed to check the effectiveness of solutions for reducing evacuation process risks (e.g.: emergency planning; architectural elements development; interventions for floodwaters collection also in urban scenarios).

Investigating Exposure in Historical Scenarios: How People Behave in Fires, Earthquakes and Floods

In case of a disaster, the individuals’ safety depends on interactions between buildings vulnerability, related post-event damages and environmental conditions, human reaction to hazardous situations. Such interferences are critical in historical scenarios, because of particular environment features (e.g.: high buildings vulnerabilities; urban layout which is not designed to face actual emergency; individuals’ familiarity with architectural spaces, especially for tourists). Current risk assessment methods are limited to define exposure in terms of population’s presence in the scenario, but analysis should consider human behaviors in emergency, and especially during the evacuation process. Simulation models for evaluating evacuation motion have been recently developed to this aim, and so to evaluate the effectiveness of risk-reduction strategies. Nevertheless, models development and validation should be supported by experimental data to effectively represent the “human factor” in critical conditions. Hence, this paper combines previous literature results and real-life emergency analyses (performed on videotapes database from all over the World), by focusing on three main natural disasters recurrent for historical scenarios: fires, earthquakes and flood. Behavioral analyses try to define significant man-environment interactions from a qualitative and quantitative point of view. Results show how noticed behaviors can be distinguished in common ones and peculiar ones (referring to a specific disaster). Quantitative analyses referring to motion quantities evidence differences between the considered emergencies and underline the importance to adopt specific model inputs for each simulated disaster.

How to Increase Occupants Safety with No Architectural Modifications: Defining Effective Wayfinding Systems

Wayfinding is ones of the most significant issues during a fire evacuation in Historical Buildings, mainly because of possible building layout complexity, level of occupants’ familiarity with the architectural spaces, and potential environmental modifications due to fire effects. Proper wayfinding systems could be able to increase safety levels for occupants by reducing the egress time. Furthermore, these solutions are generally able to maintain a low impact on the building itself (and on its layout). However, according to a Behavioral design (BD) approach, they should be designed in order to effective provide the needed assistance to evacuees, by “interacting” with their behaviours. This chapter firstly offers an organization of existing wayfinding strategies, by mainly distinguishing active and passive systems (since they can bring or not “dynamic” directional information to the evacuees). The attention is focused on the interaction with human behaviors and the possibility to apply the systems (and related building components) to Building Heritage scenarios. Methodologies to evaluate the evacuation facilities effectiveness are outlined according to previous researches and BD studies recommendations.