# Building Fire Evacuation: An IoT-Aided Perspective in the 5G Era
## 4 Preliminary Design of an IoT-Aided Building Fire Evacuation Control System
### Advantages of the Proposed System  
By summarizing the information sources, means of data transmission, and potential services and applications in building fire evacuation control, a preliminary design of an IoT-aided building fire evacuation control system is proposed. The system architecture is demonstrated in Figure 3. With the sensors and devices to collect various information on the fire-ground, a variety of means of data transmission are applied to build the communication between sensors and the IoT platform. In order to provide more diversified services and applications to help the building evacuation, promising technologies including BIM, fire inverse, and evacuation simulation are embraced in the system. Furthermore, considering the importance of data protection and system security, the system is also equipped with an authentication and encryption layer to protect the endpoint devices so that malicious attacks and data breaches can be avoided. In addition to protecting the security of endpoint devices, data security in the IoT platform can be enabled by firewalls and strong user authentication processes. With these measures, the proposed system can be secure and only used for its intended uses (i.e., fire-ground situational awareness, evacuation planning, or evacuation guidance).  
The advantages of the proposed system are summarized as follows:  
1. Monitoring the fire environment and occupants' situations in buildings.  
IoT technology provides a possible approach to link the cyber and physical environment together in building fire evacuation control. By establishing the perception layer and network layer of the proposed IoT system, the ubiquitous sensors and various communication networks can be integrated to enable the monitoring of the fire environment and occupants' situations in buildings. Compared with traditional fire evacuation, the IoT-aided fire evacuation highly improves the information collection and update on-site, ensuring safety in evacuations. Moreover, the collected people count information is also useful for building energy management in regular time. Therefore, it is applicable to implement such a system in buildings.
2. 3D-visualization of the building information.  
By exchanging the monitoring data from various sensors and devices through the Internet, IoT enables the aggregation of all the on-site information into one place. Thus, combined with BIM, the visualization and management of various evacuation equipment and facilities within the BIM model can be achieved. With the BIM model to show the locations of various evacuation facilities and hazardous areas, a direct understanding of the relationship between the building geometry and the fire situation can be built by building managers and ICs, making it easier to guide occupants' evacuations. As for the information regarding the state of various firefighting equipment and evacuation facilities, it consists of its historical data and real-time monitoring data. By attaching the state information to the specific equipment and facilities in the BIM model, browsing and control of these installations can be achieved.  
System-level-based evacuation strategy planning.  
With the integration of IoT devices, IoT data, and IoT platforms, the IoT system enables data transfer and interoperation to support more advanced services and applications. Therefore, the fire risk assessment module and the evacuation decision support module are proposed, respectively. These modules can help the planning of evacuation strategies from a systematic level. Compared with the traditional pre-defined fire evacuation plan, the currently proposed system enables dynamic adjustment of the evacuation strategy according to the fire development and the pattern of occupants' location. As a result, more effective and efficient fire evacuation control in tall buildings can be achieved.