Modeling evacuation in institutional space: Linking three-dimensional data capture, simulation, analysis, and visualization workflows for risk assessment and communication

This article presents exploratory research to develop new workflows that address the challenges of adequately capturing the geometry and topology of complex institutional spaces, the analysis of prescriptive evacuation plans, and the simulation of human movement and behavior in emergency scenarios. We present a collection of geovisual analytical environments that were developed to permit new ways to view and assess risk, evacuation, and human movement. Part of this research considers how different approaches to the representation of complex institutional space, using three-dimensional capture technologies at multiple resolutions (or derived from conventional formats, such as building plans), have implicit advantages or liabilities in the analysis of risk and human evacuation. We combine three-dimensional data capture methods with geographical information science theory, three-dimensional game engines, three-dimensional evacuation simulations and spatial analyses that address the variability of campus popu...