• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.667-674
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• 2023

In the event of a disaster occurring within a building, the prompt and efficient evacuation and rescue of occupants within the building becomes the foremost priority to minimize casualties. For the purpose of such rescue operations, it is essential to ascertain the distribution of individuals within the building. Nevertheless, there is a primary dependence on accounts provided by pertinent individuals like building proprietors or security staff, alongside fundamental data encompassing floor dimensions and maximum capacity. Consequently, accurate determination of the number of occupants within the building holds paramount significance in reducing uncertainties at the site and facilitating effective rescue activities during the golden hour. This research introduces a methodology employing computer vision algorithms to count the number of occupants within distinct building locations based on images captured by installed multiple CCTV cameras. The counting methodology consists of three stages: (1) establishing virtual Lines of Interest (LOI) for each camera to construct a multi-camera network environment, (2) detecting and tracking people within the monitoring area using deep learning, and (3) aggregating counts across the multi-camera network. The proposed methodology was validated through experiments conducted in a five-story building with the average accurary of 89.9% and the average MAE of 0.178 and RMSE of 0.339, and the advantages of using multiple cameras for occupant counting were explained. This paper showed the potential of the proposed methodology for more effective and timely disaster management through common surveillance systems by providing prompt occupancy information.