We present a system for simulating crowd behavior in emergency scenarios, specifically, the evacuation of buildings. We use a combination of techniques from robot motion planning, collision detection and response, particle systems, and group behavior. Our method initially builds a roadmap of the environment using PRMs, and computes the path to closest exits on the roadmap. The virtual agents mu...

OBJECTIVES: To educate athletic trainers and others about the need for emergency planning, to provide guidelines in the development of emergency plans, and to advocate documentation of emergency planning. BACKGROUND: Most injuries sustained during athletics or other physical activity are relatively minor. However, potentially limb-threatening or life-threatening emergencies in athletics and phy...

Considerable progress has been made over the last 15 years on building adaptive control systems to assist pilots in flying damaged aircraft. Once a pilot has regained control of a damaged aircraft, the next problem is to determine the best site for an emergency landing. In general, the decision depends on many factors including the actual control envelope of the aircraft, distance to the site, ...

The purpose of this policy is to provide an outline of, as well as references concerning the resources and planning needed to meet the emergency medical care needs of the individual and the community. Emergency departments* must possess the staff and resources necessary to evaluate all individuals presenting to the emergency department (ED). Emergency departments must also be able to provide or...

Flood risk reduction can be obtained in many ways and by many measures. A common approach in The Netherlands is to divide the measures in three layers: flood prevention, land use planning and emergency measurement. An important question is how to select the measures among these layers, and whether it is necessary to select measures in all three layers. In this paper we follow an economic approa...

BACKGROUND Strong community linkages are essential to a health care organization's overall preparedness for emergencies. OBJECTIVE To assess community emergency preparedness linkages among hospitals, public health officials, and first responders and to investigate the influence of community hazards, previous preparation for an event requiring national security oversight, and experience respon...

The computation of an optimal route for given start and destination in a static transportation network is used in many applications of private route planning. In this work we focus on route planning for emergency cars, such as for example police, fire brigade and ambulance. In case of private route planning typical quantities to be minimized are travel time or route length. However, the idea of...

IN VIEW of the great paucity of information about the work of accident and emergency departments, it was decided to undertake a detailed study of all new patients attending the accident and emergency department of the Royal Victoria Hospital over a period of one week. The aims were: (a) to make a critical analysis of the work of the department; (b) to provide figures for planning and developmen...