A Virtual Reality-Based System For Fire Fighting And Emergency Response

Fire is one of the urban disasters which lead to deaths and economic losses. Development of emergency response systems will shorten the response time and hence reduce the deaths and economic losses. The objective of the work presented in this paper is to develop a virtual reality-based system for the simulation of fire emergency response. The system is designed in an interactive mode, and can be used to facilitate fire fighting decision making, perform fire fighting drilling and emergency evacuation drilling. The spreading of the flames and smoke is based on fire numerical simulation, so that the evolution of the fire in the virtual environment is similar to that in real life. The simulation of fire scene, the development solutions for the realization of the immersion of the user in a virtual environment, the interaction between the users and the virtual environment are presented in details. The application of the system in an underground station is also given. The results showed that the VR-based system can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of decision-making on fire fighting and emergency response.