Retracing evacuation strategy: A virtual reality game-based investigation into the influence of building’s spatial configuration in an emergency

Abstract

During evacuation, individual navigation behavior is often dictated by the legibility of evacuation signs and the environmental setting itself. People tend to follow previously-used and known routes (to retrace) rather than follow evacuation signage. This has proven undesirable, even fatal, in emergencies and such behavior calls for a better understanding of the influencing factors. This contribution consists of a virtual reality experiment in which 72 participants evacuated from a hotel building in which the spatial configurations were altered. The tendency to retrace diminished when the evacuation route led through a wider, straight corridor, suggesting that the building's spatial configuration has an important influence on retracing and should be more carefully considered in the design of buildings in and agent-based simulations.

HMD-Based VR Tool for Traffic Psychological Examination: Conceptualization and Design Proposition

“…Driving simulation and VR technologies are closely related from their very beginning in the 1960s [14], including especially computer-generated imagery (CGI) and physical and mental immersion into VR content. From the 1960s onwards, virtual environments have grown to become a promising trend for various simulations since they offer safe and economic opportunities to reliably explore situations happening in the real world [18]. Generally, virtual simulations help psychologists and researchers collect valid data on human behavior, sensorimotor activity and cognitive processes, because simulations provide a reality-like environment where cognitive phenomena are considered equivalent to reality and can be directly transferable to practice [19].…”

“…The usual goal of simulations is the training-i.e., enhancement of the potential performance in the real-world tasks [30]. However, the virtual technology also has excellent research and diagnostic potential for studying drivers, as it can lead a person to a well-controlled and ecologically valid experimental environment [33], with controllable levels of interactivity [34] and activity logging systems [18]. VR technologies, especially those based on HMD, have the potential to transcend the boundaries of place and time, providing unlimited opportunities to create any specific content and deliver it wherever it is needed, as well as incorporating gamification principles to increase their attractiveness.…”

“…Meaningful driving environments with an adequate number of visual stimuli can be adopted using graphical assets from the Unity Asset Store [117]. The virtual environment employed embedded interaction and logging components including eye-tracking, which is more deeply introduced in Snopková and colleagues [18]. The environment offers a controllable and persistent environment where the specific road characteristics are not manipulated.…”

The Possibilities of Using Virtual Environments in Research on Wayfinding

“…Hölscher et al (2006) proposed three way nding strategies for multi-level buildings: central point strategy (following well-known paths), direction strategy (leading directly to the horizontal position of the destination), and oor strategy ( nding the desired oor rst). Snopková et al (2021) discussed the relationship between the space-syntax parameters of a building and the choice of retracing strategy adopted during an evacuation scenario.…”

Sex Differences in Spatial Memory: Comparison of Three Tasks Using the Same Virtual Context

“…In the last few decades, the development of new technologies has simplified the assessment of spatial memory in humans [8][9][10][11][12] and has made possible the study of topographic memory, which implies large spaces in the real environment that can be reproduced to scale in the virtual environment while also controlling all the elements of the environment itself. This has allowed the development of a high number of studies belonging to a wide range of fields of knowledge such as neuroscience, developmental psychology, geography or security [13][14][15].…”