Flood action VR: a virtual reality framework for disaster awareness and emergency response training

Abstract

Natural disasters constitute unexpected and severe threats with devastating effects on communities worldwide. Recent studies emphasize the importance of public awareness and training of first responders in disaster preparedness and response activities. This paper presents a virtual reality framework that creates a realistic 3D gaming environment with real-time and historical weather and disaster conditions. Main goals of the project are to increase public awareness about disasters by using gamification techniques, and train and evaluate emergency responders by simulating real-life scenarios. The system is supported by voice recognition to interact with the virtual world, and analyze user's actions and voice to detect emotional and psychological state.