Can mobile apps effectively assist people to escape wildfires in real-time, while their lives are in danger? In a recent journal paper, published in the Fire Safety journal (impact factor 3.78), our colleague Dr. Andreas Kamilaris, together with Ruben Koole, a Creative Technologies BSc Programme student, investigated this possibility, proposing a method for assisting citizens who are endangered by wildfires. Method and system implemented are evaluated in two diverse scenarios, while numerous recommendations are recorded, an indication of the problem’s high complexity.
In more detail, the paper examines the potential of mobile applications to be employed to assist people to escape wildfires in real-time, by means of using and evaluating EscapeWildFire, a system for suggesting evacuation paths to mobile phone users in real-time. Two different evaluation strategies are followed: (a) Considering different areas of the island of Cyprus as case studies with simulated wildfires and actual users and (b) Considering a historic wildfire that occurred in Amarillo, Texas in 2011. Results in both cases show that mobile apps can effectively be employed to assist people to escape wildfires, but their use is heavily dependent on a backend system that supports the precise modelling of the wildfire. The time between the wildfire outbreak and the notification reaching the user is crucial for their safety. Various recommendations for improvements have been recorded based on either the feedback of participants in the case studies or the observations from the Texas wildfire. The code of the mobile app, backend and administration interface used are all open-source; fire authorities around the world are encouraged to further investigate this opportunity and adopt this approach.
Link to the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0379711223000152
Open source code: https://github.com/superworld-cyens/Escape-Wildfires
