A Low-Cost Open-Source Architecture for a Digital Signage Emergency Evacuation System for Cruise Ships, Based on IoT and LTE/4G Technologies

Abstract

During a ship evacuation, many people panic as they do not know the direction that leads to the emergency muster station. Moreover, sometimes passengers get crowded in corridors or stairs, so they cannot save their lives. This paper proposes an IoT-enabled architecture for digital signage systems that directs passengers to the muster stations of a cruise ship by following the less dangerous route. Thus, crews’ and passengers’ safety risks during a ship evacuation can be low, and human health hazards may be limited. The system is based on a low-cost and open-source architecture that can also be used in a variety of fields in industrial IoT applications. The proposed modular digital signage architecture utilizes Light Emitting Diode (LED) strips that are remotely managed through a private Long-Term Evolution (LTE)/Fourth Generation (4G) cellular network. Publish–subscribe communication protocols were used for the control of the digital strips and particularly through a Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) broker who publishes/subscribes every message to specific topics of the realized IoT platform, while the overall digital signage system centralization was implemented with an appropriate dashboard supported from an open-source RESTful API.

Emergency Communication System Based on Wireless LPWAN and SD-WAN Technologies: A Hybrid Approach

“…The authors of [3] offer a dependable, adaptable, and scalable IoT-based system that monitors and alerts passengers and crew to the safest route to muster stations during an emergency evacuation. They also examine the factors that determine a ship's safe evacuation, which could be helpful for other kinds of structures, including schools, homes, and hospitals.…”

“…LoRaWAN is an open and standardized low-power wireless network (LPWAN). Table 2 shows a performance comparison between the most popular LPWAN technologies [3,26]. The underlying physical layer or the wireless modulation utilized to create the longrange communication link is LoRa [24,27], or Frequency Shift Keying (FSK), a chirp spread spectrum-based proprietary modulation scheme (CSS).…”

“…Overall, due to their low flexibility, any new deployments for adding new WAN extensions and capabilities were not easy to perform [34]. Table 3 depicts a performance comparison of the most common WAN technologies [3,26]. SDN technology was the most recognized subject in the previous decade in the network world because of the solution that promised to provide for large scaled networks.…”

“…To employ satellite communications, we should consider IPv4 and IPv6 support over satellite, as well as actuator and sensor interoperability with the satellite systems. To increase the effectiveness of IoT over satellites, heterogeneous network interoperability, and radio resource management must be deployed [2,3]. Together with the time delay that happens when a signal is relayed by the satellite through a transmission, we should also consider other timing group delays [3,4].…”

“…To increase the effectiveness of IoT over satellites, heterogeneous network interoperability, and radio resource management must be deployed [2,3]. Together with the time delay that happens when a signal is relayed by the satellite through a transmission, we should also consider other timing group delays [3,4].…”