Abstract
Traditional evacuation training is ineffective as it does not simulate decision making against tough disaster situations. Therefore, evacuation training should be significantly enhanced to offer realistic simulated evacuation experiences, entailing decision making. A promising approach to the enhancement is to introduce virtual reality (VR) into evacuation training, and there have been numerous VR-based evacuation training systems. The authors launched the project Evacuation Training in Metaverse (ETM) considering the recent surge of interest in the metaverse as a VR extension. The ETM system is being developed based on the design principle: gathering numerous participants, pursuing high fidelity, and simulating a sudden earthquake. The ETM system transforms ordinary time to emergency time by creating a sudden earthquake, allowing participants to experience simulated earthquake evacuation in a high fidelity virtual world developed from an open-city model, photogrammetry, etc. The participants make decisions in the virtual world while being influenced by numerous others.
TopIntroduction
Natural or artificial disasters threaten human beings of all ages. For example, the incidence of floods and typhoons (or hurricanes and cyclones) has recently increased, and damages have tended to become critical due to climate change (WMO, 2022). In terms of unpredictability, an earthquake is a very devastating disaster. A large earthquake can cause devastating damage and numerous casualties. For example, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami killed over 15,000 people (Kazama & Noda, 2012). In 2021, earthquakes with a magnitude of 7 or higher have occurred approximately 19 times worldwide (USGS, 2022). A large earthquake is never in someone else’s affair. In this disaster-prone age, we must prepare to outlive disasters.
Disaster education is fundamental but influential disaster preparedness targeted at a wider range of people. Although there are different types of disaster education (e.g. watching a video and visiting a disaster museum), evacuation training is the most common disaster education regularly held in schools, businesses and communities. However, traditional evacuation training is insufficient to offer simulated evacuation experiences because participants (trainees) are urged to follow a predefined path to a specified safe location (e.g. shelter). In a real disaster, they may encounter challenging situations that require making decisions during evacuation. When the recommended route is inaccessible, for example, they will have to decide on another safe route as rapidly as feasible. Evacuation training entailing such a decision making is effective in terms of preparing against real disasters. Therefore, evacuation training should be significantly enhanced to offer realistic simulated evacuation experiences.
Disaster education can be enhanced using information and communication technology (ICT), and there have been numerous examples of ICT-based disaster education. For example, a web hazard map (Song, et al., 2022) and a map-based message-sharing tool (Uchida et al., 2021) were used for disaster education programmes in school. Regarding evacuation training, for example, the authors developed a location based mobile game application where participants evacuate to a shelter in the real world within a time limit while making decisions against disaster situations expressed (controlled) using a branching scenario (Mitsuhara et al., 2015). As other examples, mobile applications have been developed that visualise simulated approaching tsunamis on digital maps and allow participants to experience pseudo evacuation by sprinting in the real world toward a shelter while looking at the visualised tsunami (Yamori & Sugiyama, 2020) (Mitsuhara & Shishibori, 2022). These applications can be regarded as supplements to or enhancement of real-world evacuation training.
Real-world evacuation training entails challenges ensuring scenario variety and participant safety. Considering disaster unpredictability, evacuation training should be conducted in various situations that assume compound disasters (e.g. earthquake in heavy rain), different hours (e.g. early morning and midnight) and weathers (e.g. high temperature and strong wind). However, in numerous cases, real-world evacuation training is conducted during the day on a beautiful day based on a basic scenario (i.e. a single disaster). In addition, outdoor evacuation training is cancelled when severe weather (e.g. heavy rain and snowstorm) is forecast, and participants must pay close attention to avoid traffic accidents. Therefore, virtual-world evacuation training has been demanded, which can be conducted in various situations (assumptions) in a safe environment, and virtual reality (VR)-based evacuation training has been actively investigated, developed and practised based on the demand.
Key Terms in this Chapter
NPC (Non-Player Character): It is a term used especially in video games and indicates a computer-controlled character that players cannot operate. Many simultaneous NPCs are occasionally called a mob and introduced in disaster simulators as evacuee agents.
AR (Augmented Reality): Focusing on visual effects, it is a technique that superimposes a virtual world (computer graphics) onto the real world (a real-time vision captured by camera devices, including smartphones or tablets). AR is roughly divided into three categories: marker based, markerless and location based.
CityGML: It is a standard format of city-scaled geospatial data available for visualisation, analysis and simulation and has the concept of LOD (Level of Detail) ranging from 1 to 4. For example, LOD1 contains a simple dimension data (box model) for buildings. LOD4 corresponds to a BIM model.
BIM (Building Information Modelling): It is a process that manages information of steps (parts) in a life cycle for building construction, and as a BIM model, the information (e.g. dimension, internal structure, material and functionality) can be shared uniformly among steps. BIM differs from CAD (Computer Aided Design) that basically supports 2D or 3D technical drawing.
Oculus/Meta Quest 2: It is a binocular opaque head-mounted display (HMD) that is lightweight (approximately 500 g) and works on Android-based operating systems. Of the HMD products, Oculus Quest 2 is thought to be most popular owing to its good performance and reasonable price.
Plateau: It is a Japanese project of creating and distributing open-city models led by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT). PLATEAU models are based on CityGML 2.0. As of the end of 2021, the project has provided 3D models of 56 cities in Japan (e.g. Tokyo and Osaka) ( https://www.mlit.go.jp/plateau/ , in Japanese).
Metaverse: The term Metaverse (meta + universe) appeared in a cyberpunk novel in 1992 and was getting recognised as the concept or service of multiuser VR. Metaverse can be extended to AR that integrates real and virtual worlds by superimposing multiusers (avatars) in a virtual world onto the real world.
VR (Virtual Reality): It provides simulated experiences in a virtual world while stimulating senses (especially vision and hearing). A VR where a user can get immersed in the virtual world by wearing an HMD is often called ‘Immersive VR’ (IVR). This chapter does not make a strict distinction between VR and IVR.
Photogrammetry: It is an image-processing technique for generating the 3D model or obtaining geometric properties of a target object from many digital photos (taken from many angles). A variety of photogrammetry software (e.g. 3DF Zephyr ) have been provided, and some advanced smartphones or tablets with a 3D-scanning sensor make photogrammetry easier.
Unity3d: It is a cross-platform game engine involving an integrated development environment (IDE). Unity3D can make the development of VR software easier by providing 3D modelling, audio-visual effects, physics and collision calculations, etc.