Development of a Cyber Physical System for Fire Safety

Abstract

In this study a cyber physical system (a system of collaborating computational elements that monitor and control physical entities) test bed was developed to demonstrate the viability of real-time decision support for smart firefighting and to provide validation data for continued cyber physical system (CPS) development. This CPS utilizes current technologies in the modern built environment and emerging virtualization tools. The smart networked fire test bed consisted of a multi-story instrumented building, a variety of fire and non-fire networked sensors, and a computational framework anchored by a Building Information Modeling (BIM) representation of the building. Well-controlled full-scale fire experiments were conducted (physical domain) and represented in the three-dimensional BIM (computational domain) allowing for visualization of critical static and dynamic building and fire information needed to support firefighter decisions. The CPS test bed produced remarkable evidence about the opportunities for fire safety created by the communication between sensors, BIM, and fire.