Survey of indoor location technologies and wayfinding systems for users with cognitive disabilities in emergencies

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the challenging topic of indoor location and guidance in daily tasks of location and hostile scenarios (i.e. emergency evacuations) that could be produced, which at present have no universally viable and implemented solution. Indoor guidance in public spaces such as hospitals or private spaces such as a company building helps people with mild and moderate cognitive disabilities to get on safely in their daily lives and to promote their social integration. This paper analyses three areas of research: location technologies, location services for sensory navigation and problems derived from stress due to panic in hostile circumstances. Therefore, in this work we focus on finding solutions related to the absence of GNSS signals, discriminating of different floors in a building, problems of adequate information transmission to the users and absence of connectivity and interfaces, i.e. we must adapt the solutions that exist for outdoor to indoor. In particular, the analysis has focused on viable technologies for emergency or everyday situations that create a network of roads within a single building. The results obtained outline the requirements that need to be addressed in the development of wayfinding services that provides sensory guidance to people with cognitive disabilities.

KEYWORDS:

• Navigation
• indoor
• wayfinding
• intellectual disabilities
• emergency situations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).