Personalize Wayfinding Information for Fire Responders based on Virtual Reality Training Data

Abstract

Modern buildings with increasing complexity (e.g., more square feet, complicated indoor routes) can cause serious difficulties for first responders in emergency wayfinding. While real-time data collection and information analytics become easier in indoor wayfinding, a new challenge has arisen: cognitive overload due to information redundancy. Standardized and universal spatial information systems are still widely used, ignoring first responders' individual difference in information intake. This paper proposes the theoretical framework of a spatial information systems for first responders, which reflects their individual difference in information preference and helps reduce the cognitive load in line of duty. The proposed method includes the use of Virtual Reality (VR) to simulate real world buildings, and the modeling of first responders' reactions to different information formats and contents in simulated wayfinding tasks. This work is expected to set a foundation of future spatial information system that correctly and effectively responds to first responders' needs.

Wayfinding in Virtual Reality Serious Game: An Exploratory Study in the Context of User Perceived Experiences

“…Wayfinding has been used extensively in evacuation and navigation experiments, since it creates affordances by prompting human actions [26,27]. Various studies have investigated design, and implementation of navigation processes such as wayfinding cues inside the VRE for training and evacuation applications [28].…”

“…In the past, wayfinding studies have been conducted in indoor environments [31,33] and mostly for fire [27,34,35], underground rock-related hazards safety training [33] and earthquake evacuations [10,14]. These researches have [32] suggested that further studies should be conducted to improve the evaluation process for VR evacuation trainings.…”