A Distributed Building Evacuation System

Abstract

This thesis investigates the feasibility of a smart building evacuation system, capable of guiding occupants along safe paths to exits and responding to changing threats. Inspired by developments in amorphous computing, the design presented is scalable to large networks, robust to hardware and communication failure, and based on simple low-cost components. A simulation and hardware prototype demonstrate that this distributed building evacuation system is both feasible and cost effective.