A methodology for evacuation route planning inside buildings using geospatial technology

Evacuation route planning is a fundamental task for building engineering projects. Safety regulations are established so that all occupants are driven on time out of a building to a secure place when faced with an emergency situation. As an example, Spanish building code requires the planning of evacuation routes on large and, usually, public buildings. Engineers often plan these routes on single building projects, repeatedly assigning clusters of rooms to each emergency exit in a trial-and-error process. But problems may arise for a building complex where distribution and use changes make visual analysis cumbersome and sometimes unfeasible. This problem could be solved by using well-known spatial analysis techniques, implemented as a specialized software able to partially emulate engineer reasoning. In this paper we propose and test an easily reproducible methodology that makes use of free and open source software components for solving a case study. We ran a complete test on a building floor at the University of Alicante (Spain). This institution offers a web service (WFS) that allows retrieval of 2D geometries from any building within its campus. We demonstrate how geospatial technologies and computational geometry algorithms can be used for automating the creation and optimization of evacuation routes. In our case study, the engineers’ task is to verify that the load capacity of each emergency exit does not exceed the standards specified by Spain’s current regulations. Using Dijkstra’s algorithm, we obtain the shortest paths from every room to the most appropriate emergency exit. Once these paths are calculated, engineers can run simulations and validate, based on path statistics, different cluster configurations. Techniques and tools applied in this research would be helpful in the design and risk management phases of any complex building project.

Teaching-learning process of historical heritage: a Journey as a beginning, path and end

The implantation of new university degrees within the European Higher Education Area implies the need of innovative methodologies in teaching and learning to improve the skills and competencies of students and to answer the growing needs that society continuously demands to heritage management experts. The present work shows an application of the teaching methodology proposed during the international workshop entitled “I International Planning Preservation Workshop. Learning from Al Andalus”, which included the participation of the University of Alicante and Granada, Università Politecnico di Milano and Hunter College City University of New York; where we tried to dissolve traditional boundaries derived of interuniversity cooperation programs. The main objective of the workshop was to discuss and debate the role of urban Historical Centers within the Global Heritage by the integrated work through multidisciplinary teams and the creation of a permanent international working group between these universities to both teach and research. The methodology of this workshop was very participatory and considered the idea of a new learning process generated by "a journey experience." A trip from global to local (from the big city to the small village) but also a trip from the local (historical) part of a big city to the global dimension of contemporary historical villages identified by the students through a system of exhibition panels in affinity groups, specific projects proposed by lecturers and teachers or the generation of publications in various areas (texts, photographs, videos, etc.). So, the participation of the students in this multidisciplinary meeting has enhanced their capacity for self-criticism in several disciplines and has promoted their ability to perform learning and research strategies in an autonomous way. As a result, it has been established a permanent international work structure for the development of projects of the Historical City. This relationship has generated the publication of several books whose contents have reflected the conclusions developed in the workshop and several teaching proposals shared between those institutions. All these aspects have generated a new way of understanding the teaching process through a journey, in order to study the representative role of university in the historical heritage and to make students (from planning, heritage management, architecture, geography, sociology, history or engineering areas) be compromised on searching strategies for sustainable development in the Contemporary City.