Preface
This proceeding is a part of International Conference on Computer Applications 2010 – Management track which was held in Pondicherry, India from 24-Dec-2010 and 27-Dec-2010. This conference was hosted by Techno Forum Research and Development Centre, Pondicherry in association with Association of Scientists, Developers and Faculties (ASDF), India, British Computer Society (BCS), UK and Science and Engineering Supporting Society (Society), Korea.
The world is changing. From shopping malls to transport terminals, aircraft to passenger ships, the infrastructure of society has to cope with ever more intense and complex flows of people. Today, more than ever, safety, efficiency and comfort are issues that must be addressed by all designers. The World Trade Centre disaster brought into tragic focus the need for well-designed evacuation systems. The new regulatory framework in the marine industry, acknowledges not only the importance of ensuring that the built environment is safe, but also the central role that evacuation simulation can play in achieving this.
An additional need is to design spaces for efficiency – ensuring that maximum throughput can be achieved during normal operations – and comfort – ensuring that the resulting flows offer little opportunity for needless queuing or excessive congestion. These complex demands challenge traditional prescriptive design guides and regulations. Designers and regulators are consequently turning to performance-based analysis and regulations facilitated by the new generation of people movement models.
When a greater changes are achieved these past years, still more is to be achieved which still seems to be blue sky of 1970’s. But for all the challenges, capabilities continue to advance at phenomenal speed. Even three years ago it may have been considered a challenge to perform a network design involving the evacuation of 45,000 people from a 120 story building, but with today’s sophisticated modelling tools and high-end PCs, this is now possible. Today’s challenges are much more ambitious and involve simulating the movement and behaviour of over one million people in city-sized geometries. The management of these network is also easy and more specifically all the 45,000 people can be monitored by a single person sitting in his cabin. This has been the evidence of the development these days.
As such, the conference represents a unique opportunity for experts and beginners to gain insight into the rapidly.
Also I would like to thank all the co-operators for bringing out these proceedings for you which majorly includes my mom Mrs. K. Lakshmi and my dad Mr. J. Kunasekaran. Apart from them my biggest worthy gang of friends including Dr. S. Prithiv Rajan, Chairman of this conference, Dr. R. S. Sudhakar, Patron of this Conference, Dr. A. Manikandan and Dr. P. Anbuoli, Convener of this conference, Dr. E. Sai Kishore, Organizing Secretary of this Conference and the entire team which worked along with me for the rapid success of the conference for past 1 year from the date of initiating this Conference. Also I need to appreciate Mr. M. Suryanarayanan, MIS Head of our Conference for all his trailing works from the day till this conference day.
I would like to extend my thanks Mr. Ra. Sankaran of Research Publishing Services and his entire team which helped a lot to bring this proceeding on time and in excellent style of high quality.
Finally, I thank my family, friends, students and colleagues for their constant encouragement and support for making this type of conference.
K Kokula Krishna Hari