$600,000 granted for evacuation research
The current evacuation plan for wheelchair-bound people stuck in building fires in which the elevators are out of order is: Wheel to a specially built alcove, find an emergency telephone, make a phone call and wait patiently as the building burns down for someone to come to the rescue, said an assistant professor Keith Christensen of landscape architecture and environmental planning.
Unfortunately, Christensen said, most of these specially built alcoves are missing telephones, and some have even been utilized as convenient storage space for wastebaskets.
“The fact is, right now we don’t design safe buildings. There aren’t current evacuation plans for persons with disabilities,” Christensen said. “But that is going to change.”
Christensen and a team of professors from multiple USU colleges were recently awarded a grant of almost $600,000 from National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research, and, he said, he hopes to create a computer program that will simulate the evacuation of persons with disabilities.
“What we’re doing will change the way that people evaluate a building. For the first time, the building emergency evaluation will include accurate data for people with disabilities,” he said.
This is no small thing, Christensen said, since accurate data does not exist on this issue. The USU research will be the first of its kind, he added.
Yangquan Chen, director of the Center for Self-Organizing and Intelligent Systems, will be in charge of all the and video and feeds. Yong Seog Kim, a student majoring in management information systems, will compile and analyze the data. Anthony Chen, professor of civil and environmental engineering, will be in charge of design.
“These researchers are to be commended for their leadership, vision and commitment to persons with disabilities,” said Sean E. Michael, department head of landscape architecture and environmental planning.
“We have all the right pieces, we have a great team of interdisciplinary professors, we have all the expertise. That is why we were selected to receive the grant,” Christensen said.
Christensen said the project will take approximately three years and will consist of monitoring traffic patterns of people with disabilities. Trackers will be placed on disabled persons or on their cell phones that will upload data to computers during emergency drills, to see exact response methods and times for mock evacuations.
Christensen said the team will also be hiring at least three graduate student interns to help with the project.
One of the keys of the new research will be inventing new data-collection technology, Christensen said. The researchers will have to create new tools that can analyze enormous data sets and video.
When the project is complete, it will secure USU’s position as a leading research institution for disabilities studies, Michael said.
“This work will advance USU’s leadership, nationally, in the area of equitable design for persons with disabilities. The study will expand understanding of how evacuation and mobility challenges are navigated by this important population and will help assure that emergency scenarios have planned for all persons’ needs,” he said.
The implication of the research is huge, Christensen said. “Sixteen point seven percent of the population possess a disability condition, whether it be cognitive, visual or physical. We need to make sure they are safe.”
– evan.millsap@aggiemail.usu.edu