An investigation of passenger exit selection decisions in aircraft evacuation situations

This paper presents results from a questionnaire study of participant exit awareness and suggested exit selection in the event of emergency evacuations involving narrow body aircraft. The study involved 459 participants with varying flight experience. The results of this study supports the hypothesis that poor understanding by passengers of aircraft exit location and configuration may be a contributory factor in the resulting poor exit selection decisions made by passengers in emergency situations. These results have important safety implications for airlines and also provide important insight to evacuation model developers regarding the decision making process in agent exit selection.

Implementation of cognitive mapping, spatial representation and wayfinding behaviours of people within evacuation modelling tools

Within the building evacuation context, wayfinding describes the process in which an individual located within an arbitrarily complex enclosure attempts to find a path which leads them to relative safety, usually the exterior of the enclosure. Within most evacuation modelling tools, wayfinding is completely ignored; agents are either assigned the shortest distance path or use a potential field to find the shortest path to the exits. In this paper a novel wayfinding technique that attempts to represent the manner in which people wayfind within structures is introduced and demonstrated through two examples. The first step is to encode the spatial information of the enclosure in terms of a graph. The second step is to apply search algorithms to the graph to find possible routes to the destination and assign a cost to the routes based on their personal route preferences such as "least time" or "least distance" or a combination of criteria. The third step is the route execution and refinement. In this step, the agent moves along the chosen route and reassesses the route at regular intervals and may decide to take an alternative path if the agent determines that an alternate route is more favourable e.g. initial path is highly congested or is blocked due to fire.

'Re-using an existing wheel' developing data architecture for cooperating autonomous and semi-autonomous, agent-based web services

This short position paper considers issues in developing Data Architecture for the Internet of Things (IoT) through the medium of an exemplar project, Domain Expertise Capture in Authoring and Development ­Environments (DECADE). A brief discussion sets the background for IoT, and the development of the ­distinction between things and computers. The paper makes a strong argument to avoid reinvention of the wheel, and to reuse approaches to distributed heterogeneous data architectures and the lessons learned from that work, and apply them to this situation. DECADE requires an autonomous recording system, ­local data storage, semi-autonomous verification model, sign-off mechanism, qualitative and ­quantitative ­analysis ­carried out when and where required through web-service architecture, based on ontology and analytic agents, with a self-maintaining ontology model. To develop this, we describe a web-service ­architecture, ­combining a distributed data warehouse, web services for analysis agents, ontology agents and a ­verification engine, with a centrally verified outcome database maintained by certifying body for qualification/­professional status.

Modelling and optimization of a pneumatic microfeeder system

This paper presents modelling and design optimization of a microfeeder which, as part of a microassembly system, is used for contactless object delivery. The microfeeder consists of an array of microactuators which are controlled by electrostatic actuation and used for maneuvering outcoming air jet for object hovering and delibery. The airflow behaviour in the microactuator is analysed by means of fluid mechanics and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation from three aspects, theoretical analysis, initial design assessment, and design modifications. The focus is put on the basic types of the microfeeder structure and the effects of structural details to the systematic performance. The structural pattern of the microactuator for forming airflow nozzle is identified and two design plans are proposed as basic structure patterns of pneumatic microactuators. The optimized design numerically shows the ability of delivering objects. This paper analyses the flow distribution pattern in microactuators and points out a way for effective design of pneumatic microfeeder systems. The optimization strategy provided by the present paper has close relevance to the design and manufacture of pneumatic microfeeder systems.

The role of Minitab in teaching and learning statistics

This paper describes how the statistical package Minitab is used in teaching statistics in our undergraduate programmes in Mathematics and Statistics to enhance student learning. How the sophisticated recent versions of Minitab can be used to help students understand statistical concepts, develop their statistical thinking and gain valuable skills in performing statistical analysis are discussed.

Optimising vessel layout using human factors simulation

Evaluating ship layout for human factors (HF) issues using simulation software such as maritimeEXODUS can be a long and complex process. The analysis requires the identification of relevant evaluation scenarios; encompassing evacuation and normal operations; the development of appropriate measures which can be used to gauge the performance of crew and vessel and finally; the interpretation of considerable simulation data. In this paper we present a systematic and transparent methodology for assessing the HF performance of ship design which is both discriminating and diagnostic.

The UK WTC9/11 evacuation study: an overview of the methodologies employed and some preliminary analysis

This paper briefly describes the methodologies employed in the collection and storage of first-hand accounts of evacuation experiences derived from face-to-face interviews from evacuees from the World Trade Centre (WTC) Twin Towers complex on 11 Septebmer 2001 and the development of the High-rise Evacuation Evaluation Database (HEED). The main focus of the paper is to present a preliminary analysis of data derived from the evacuation of the North Tower.

Numerical optimisation techniques applied to evacuation analysis

A common problem faced by fire safety engineers in the field of evacuation analysis concerns the optimal design of an arbitrarily complex structure in order to minimise evacuation times. How does the engineer determine the best solution? In this study we introduce the concept of numerical optimisation techniques to address this problem. The study makes user of the buildingEXODUS evacuation model coupled with classical optimisation theory including Design of Experiments (DoE) and Response Surface Models (RSM). We demonstrate the technique using a relatively simple problem of determining the optimal location for a single exit in a square room.

Learning styles, personalisation and adaptable e-learning

Common Learning Management Systems (for example Moodle [1] and Blackboard [2]) are limited in the amount of personalisation that they can offer the learner. They are used widely and do offer a number of tools for instructors to enable them to create and manage courses, however, they do not allow for the learner to have a unique personalised learning experience. The e-Learning platform iLearn offers personalisation for the learner in a number of ways and one way is to offer the specific learning material to the learner based on the learner's learning style. Learning styles and how we learn is a vast research area. Brusilovsky and Millan [3] state that learning styles are typically defined as the way people prefer to learn. Examples of commonly used learning styles are Kolb Learning Styles Theory [4], Felder and Silverman Index of Learning Styles [5], VARK [6] and Honey and Mumford Index of Learning Styles [7] and many research projects (SMILE [8], INSPIRE [9], iWeaver [10] amonst others) attempt to incorporate these learning styles into adaptive e-Learning systems. This paper describes how learning styles are currently being used within the area of adaptive e-Learning. The paper then gives an overview of the iLearn project and also how iLearn is using the VARK learning style to enhance the platform's personalisation and adaptability for the learner. This research also describes the system's design and how the learning style is incorporated into the system design and semantic framework within the learner's profile.

Can the use of supplementary video and audio materials support student understanding of 3D animation? Some results, analysis and conclusions

A project within a computing department at the University of Greenwich, has been carried out to identify whether podcasting can be used to help understanding and learning of a subject (3D Animation). We know that the benefits of podcasting in education (HE) can be justified, [1]; [2]; [3]; [4]; [5]; [6] and that some success has been proven, but this paper aims to report the results of a term-long project that provided podcast materials for students to help support their learning using Xserve and Podcast Producer technology. Findings in a previous study [6] identified podcasting as a way to diversify learning and provde a more personalised learning experience for students, as well as being able to provide access to a greater mix of learning styles [7]. Finally this paper aims to present the method of capture and distribution, the methodologies of the study, analysis of results, and conclusions that relate to podcasting and enhanced supported learning.

Web-based course support systems: an essential tool for supporting flexible learning environment

In Higher Education web-based course support systems are essential for supporting flexible learning environments. They provide tools to enable the interaction between student and tutor to reinforce transfer of theory to understanding particularly in an academic environment, therefore this paper will examine issues associated with the use of curriculum and learning resources within Web-based course support systems and the effectiveness of the resulting flexible learning environments This paper is a general discussion about flexible learning and in this case how it was applied to one of the courses at undergraduate level one. The first section will introduce what is flexible learning and the importance of flexible learning in Higher Education followed by the description of the course and why the flexible learning concepts is important in such a course and finally, how the flexibility was useful for this particular instance.

Advanced product development integration architecture: an out-of-box solution to support distributed production networks

This paper presents novel collaboration methods implemented using a centralized client/server product development integration architecture, and a decentralized peer-to-peer network for smaller and larger companies using open source solutions. The product development integration architecture has been developed for the integration of disparate technologies and software systems for the benefit of collaborative work teams in design and manufacturing. This will facilitate the communication of early design and product development within a distributed and collaborative environment. The novelty of this work is the introduction of an‘out-of-box’ concept which provides a standard framework and deploys this utilizing a proprietary state-of-the-art product lifecycle management system (PLM). The term ‘out-of-box’ means to modify the product development and business processes to suit the technologies rather than vice versa. The key business benefits of adopting such an approach are a rapidly reconfigurable network and minimal requirements for software customization to avoid systems instability