Semantic Enhancement of a Virtual Reality Simulation System for Fire Fighting

Fires disasters provoke great destruction of high valuable environments and economical losses, especially when they are located in urban areas. The usage of Virtual Reality Simulator to support the training process of fire fighters and managers has two main advantages: i) it supports the simulation of scenarios like big city fires that could not be simulated in the real world ii) it reduces the accident risks as users are trained to experience situations as 'alike' as possible to real fire. The success of the Virtual Reality Simulator depends on how close to reality the simulation process is; it also requires the integration of heterogeneous data sources like maps and cadastre. Both these aspects are met in this paper by a careful management of semantics in the information system. Semantics are useful firstly to have a better model of the fire fighting process and a better adaptation of the simulation environment to the user profile. They are useful secondly to facilitate the integration of data from heterogeneous sources. This work discusses and presents some preliminary results about how Semantic can enhance Virtual Reality Simula-tors in the fire fighting context.

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