Simulating and Modeling of Bowie State University's Library for Navigation and Evacuation

(Group members: Harish Vadali, Divya Pasam, George Ferguson)

This project presents the simulation and modeling of a library building in a virtual environment. It is well known that crowd stampede is one of the most disastrous forms of collective behavior caused due to panic. It leads to fatalities as people get trampled and crushed as they fall. This simulation aims to aid the visitors in navigation within the building.

View of library Shelves	View of help desk

The user interface of the above views consists of a static panel with navigation buttons. The static panel at the bottom consists of sensors and anchors nodes to navigate into different rooms such as restroom, office, and shelves etc.

Modeling

The first stage in the creation of application involves modeling the virtual environment. We have modeled the library using 3ds Max and Form Z software’s.

CAD file exported in form z to extrude the walls	Walls extruded in 3D Max

VRML

The second stage in the creation of the application involves converting the 3D studio file to VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) file. The 3D model of the library modeled in 3D Max was exported to a VRML file. The 3D environment is modeled precisely so that users would be able to relate and recognize themselves with the surroundings when visualizing the virtual environment.

View of study room in the library

The third stage in the creation of the application involves creating the user interface for navigation in the virtual environment. The user interface consists of static panel with navigation buttons. The user interface consists of several buttons used to interact with virtual environment. The navigation panel has sensors and other menus like: link to first floor, second floor, restroom, etc. The last stage in the creation of the application involves adding sensors, interpolators, and anchor nodes while scripting in VRML.

Publications

• Sharma, S., Vadali, H., “Modeling Emergency Scenarios in Virtual Evacuation Environment”, IEEE World Congress on Computer Science and Information Engineering, CSIE, March 31 - April 2, Los Angeles, USA,2009
• Sharma, S., Vadali, H., “Simulation and Modeling of a Virtual Library for Navigation and Evacuation”, MSV'08 - The 2008 International Conference on Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Methods, Monte Carlo Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, July 14-17, 2008
• Sharma, S., Vadali, H., “Fuzzy Logic Application for Emergency Evacuation in a Virtual Environment”, Proceedings of World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, WMSCI-2006, Orlando, USA, July, 2008 (accepted)

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