Indoor incident situation awareness using a 3D indoor/outdoor spatial city model

Abstract

Buildings are becoming a major subject of recent disasters resulting in huge amounts of casualty and damage costs for both public and emergency managers. Increased urbanization and complexity of contemporary structures complicates emergency response procedures and decision making especially in indoor emergency situations where much of the information stays unrevealed to emergency managers prior to entering the scenes exposing risk to peoples' lives and assets. In addition, unfamiliarity with the indoor environments, limited visualization due to smoke, and collapsed and blocked areas all increase the difficulty of emergency response and rescue as well as unwanted wandering and uncertainty rou..