VAST 2008 Symposium:Evacuation Mini-ChallengeMark Whiting & Jereme HaackPacific Northwest National LaboratoryNational Visualization and Analytics Center (NVAC)October 19, 2008

Temporal Data Analytics Challenge: Evacuation! A synthetic dataset about an IED incidentThe (imaginary) scenario: In August 2007, a small improvised explosive device was set off at a Miami, Florida Department of Health (DOH) Building, resulting in casualities and moderate damage. This DOH branch has recently been involved in conflicts with local Paraiso religious groups and leaders in attempt to provide medical care to sick children at schools and other public facilities. The Paraiso religion, which is a growing movement in Florida and other southern states, is steadfastly against state-supported health care, insisting all health care be provided at home by the family.

Temporal Data Analytics Challenge: Evacuation! A synthetic dataset about an IED incident

It is suspected that Paraiso supporters were involved in the DOH bombing. Paraiso leaders have publicly denied this. We would like to use visual analytics to help us investigate the incident.

Fortunately, the DOH building under investigation was also a research test facility for RFID (radio-frequency identification) and all employees and visitors to the building wore badges enabling locations to be known during the time of the incident. The system was not sophisticated (it was still being researched), but it may help the investigation

Why is this kind of data of interest for visual analytics?Needs in emergency response, activity and behavior analysis significant VAST 2007 paper topicsRecent advances in RFID tagging technologySoftware: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pILzhLpMPc

Visualization, without the analytics

Original Simulation: creating ground truthAgain, synthetic not based on any real building or eventControls on agents range from general movement behavior to fully guidedThe casualities were based on 1) the detonation and 2) the spread of smokeWe didnt mention the smoke to you-all..! Also, didnt say which end was North?And its a really poorly designed building for emergencies

Overview of the challengeData provided: the building, people in the building and their locationsQuestions: Where did the event occur? Who did it? Who saw it? Who got out and who didnt? Answers: See the following slides

Sorting it all out Staining by Southern Illinois

Who did it? Where did they do it? Wisdom of the crowds (users) finger Ramon Katalonow UBari IVU Lab

Who saw it? Get Knapp in for questioning! VSTI-PrajnaAnton Knapp (trace visible) turns towards Ramon Katalanow (circled in red) during the evacuation. Katalanow then moves away from Knapp to other exit.

Jammed exits can add to analysis confusion UCD Protovis TimelineFigure 5. Highlighting a bottleneck in the evacuation with orange lines. This corresponds to the bottleneck in one of the hallways prior to evacuation. The bottleneck resulted in a lot of people attempting to exit through the southwest door. Due to this bottleneck, there was a casualty (RFID 59) who attempted to escape using an alternative exit. We also highlight some of the casualties near the northern exit (grayed areas), which shows us that most of these people where far from that exit.

What happened to Olive and Marcelle?? Fraunhofer

Results Overview VRVis-ComVisFigure 2: This image shows the situation during the evacuation (Timestep 588). While the suspect (orange) has already escaped, the witnesses and other people in this area (black) do not move anymore. We can assume, that they are dead. The region on the upper right is very interesting. Some people (light green) manage to escape, but from one moment on, people (red) do not escape through this exit. They turn around, and stop moving soon. We think, that something (fire, debris) must have blocked this way

Who needs to collect submissions? Publish your answer on You Tube! University of Wellington