Universally Designed Beacon-Assisted Indoor Navigation for Emergency Evacuations

Abstract

The United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) obligates national governments to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in emergency situations. This article examines the application and accessibility of state-of-the-art ICT solutions in emergency situations. Research has indeed shown that the design and implementation of evacuation procedures in emergency situations play a critical role in ensuring personal safety and protection. While research has examined the experiences of persons including persons with disabilities in emergency situations, research has yet to examine fully the role that cutting-edge indoor navigation solutions including, for example, Internet of Things (IoT), mobile device and big data analytics hardware and software, in simultaneously ensuring the safety and protection of persons with disabilities and everyone from a universal design perspective. Emerging research on IoT indoor navigation solutions has shown that networks of low-energy Bluetooth (BLE) beacons paired with a mobile application provide a usable wayfinding solution for persons with disabilities in laboratory and controlled experimental settings. This article fills this gap by asking "To what extent can BLE networks ensure the safety and protection of persons with disabilities and everyone in simulated emergency situations? Data from a multimethod study of user experience in emergency evacuations shows that BLE beacon networks could provide a more accessible user experience for persons with disabilities and everyone to evacuate indoor environments during emergency situations.

Accessible wayfinding and navigation: a systematic mapping study

“…The literature review described in [70] selected and analyzed 15 papers that present state-of-the-art solutions for wayfinding in emergency situations based on mobile applications and sensors embedded in the smartphone or in the environment; both actual disabilities and situational disabilities (e.g., impaired vision from smoke or impaired hearing from alarms) are considered in these papers, and thus, universal design is taken as a framework to examine the various solutions. Unfortunately, none of the analyzed papers takes a universal design perspective.…”

Towards an Indoor Navigation Application for Emergency Evacuations and Persons with Visual Impairments – Experiences from First Responders and End Users

“…Universally designed ICT-assisted indoor navigation is a promising approach to the problem of evacuating a building with a diverse group of people, including employees that may know the building well, but also first-time visitors and people with visual impairments [6]. The ongoing INSIDE project aims to take an existing mobile app that provides universally designed indoor-navigation at Oslo Metropolitan University, the OsloMet application, and re-design it to support first responders with situational awareness assistance as well as to assist the public in evacuating efficiently [7]. The original OsloMet application is based on a network of low-energy Bluetooth (BLE) beacons paired with a mobile app to provide a way-finding solution for everyone, including persons with visual disabilities.…”