BIM-based holonic system for real-time pathfinding in building emergency scenario

Emergency management can benefit from advanced information and communication technology (ICT), since they can support officers in charge with rescue operation to deal with urgent decision within a really short deadline. Further enhancement can derive from the application of holonic systems, inherited from the manufacturing industry, to tackle unforeseen scenario. The aim of this research is to develop a BIM-integrated technology for the real-time pathfinding during emergencies. A virtual reality platform, exploiting building topological data from the digital model, can support the standard Emergency approach if an unexpected event voids the network of predetermined paths. The developed system has been tested in a large mixed-used building assumed as case study.