Source-linked AI summary
Immersive Virtual Reality Serious Games for Evacuation Training and Research: A Systematic Literature Review
Zhenan Feng, Vicente A. González, Robert Amor, Ruggiero Lovreglio, Guillermo Cabrera
TL;DR
Building evacuation training needs effective knowledge delivery and retention, while traditional approaches may be limited. This paper systematically reviews IVR serious games for evacuation training and research and develops a conceptual framework connecting design, implementation, pedagogical, behavioral, and participation-related factors. The review reports advantages and disadvantages of IVR serious games and frames directions for future applications, while noting that the framework requires further validation.
Problem
Traditional evacuation-training approaches may be ineffective for transmitting and retaining knowledge, and no systematic review had assessed IVR serious games for building evacuation purposes.
Method
The paper conducts a systematic literature review and qualitative analysis of IVR serious games for building evacuation training and research.
Results
The review proposes a conceptual framework connecting pedagogical and behavioral impacts, gaming-environment development, and outcome and participation-experience measures.
Takeaways & Limitations
The framework provides insights and guidelines for developing and implementing IVR serious games in future evacuation-training and research applications.
Takeaways & Limitations
The review excludes theoretical papers without case studies, and its framework requires further study and validation.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
An appropriate and safe behavior for exiting a facility is key to reducing injuries and increasing survival when facing an emergency evacuation in a building. Knowledge on the best evacuation practice is commonly delivered by traditional training approaches such as videos, posters, or evacuation drills, but they may become ineffective in terms of knowledge acquisition and retention. Serious games (SGs) are an innovative approach devoted to training and educating people in a gaming environment. Recently, increasing attention has been paid to immersive virtual reality (IVR)-based SGs for evacuation knowledge delivery and behavior assessment because they are highly engaging and promote greater cognitive learning. This paper aims to understand the development and implementation of IVR SGs in the context of building evacuation training and research, applied to various indoor emergencies such as fire and earthquake. Thus, a conceptual framework for effective design and implementation through the systematic literature review method was developed. As a result, this framework integrates critical aspects and provides connections between them, including pedagogical and behavioral impacts, gaming environment development, and outcome and participation experience measures.
1. Introduction
Building emergencies require safe evacuation behavior, yet traditional training may not effectively transmit or retain evacuation knowledge. The paper reviews IVR serious games and proposes a framework connecting factors for their development and implementation.
- Safe evacuation behavior is crucial for increasing survival during building emergencies.
- Traditional approaches such as videos, posters, seminars, courses, and drills may not effectively transmit evacuation knowledge.
- Serious games primarily support training and education rather than entertainment and may improve knowledge gain and retention.
- This paper systematically reviews IVR serious games for indoor building evacuation processes.
- The proposed framework identifies and connects factors contributing to effective IVR serious-game development and implementation.
2. Background
Serious games use gaming environments for education, training, and behavioral research, while IVR provides immersive interaction and spatial experience. IVR evacuation games offer learning and analysis opportunities but require attention to motion sickness and systematic evidence gaps.
- Serious games apply gaming technology and design primarily to education, training, simulation, and organizational problem solving.
- Serious games can support knowledge acquisition, content understanding, and development of specific skills.
- Their interactive structure can provide immediate feedback and record participant decisions and behavior for analysis.
- In this paper, VR denotes full immersion through head-mounted displays or projection-based displays, including CAVE systems.
- IVR may improve focus, memory recall, and spatial awareness through immersion, while supporting engaging hazard and risk-awareness experiences.
- Motion sickness can result from sensory conflicts between visually perceived self-motion and a stationary physical body.
- No literature review had systematically assessed the combination of IVR and serious games for building evacuation purposes.
3. Research Design
The research uses a systematic literature review and qualitative analysis to identify factors supporting IVR serious games for indoor evacuation training and research. These findings are integrated into a framework offering guidance for future research.
- The study conducts a systematic literature review of IVR serious games tailored to building evacuation training and research.
- Qualitative data analysis identifies empirical evidence on factors contributing to effective and robust IVR serious-game development and implementation.
- The resulting framework integrates analyzed evidence and provides guidelines for future research.
4. Systematic Literature Review
The systematic literature review follows a five-stage framework covering problem formulation, work identification, study-quality assessment, evidence synthesis, and interpretation.
- The review follows frameworks recommended by Khan et al. and Thomé et al.
- Its five stages are formulating research problems, identifying relevant work, assessing study quality, summarizing evidence, and interpreting findings.
- The process combines evidence assessment, synthesis, and interpretation within the systematic review design.
4.1 Formulating the Research Problems
The review frames IVR serious-game evaluation around reality, meaning, and play, connecting evacuation impacts, participation experience, and system-development elements through research questions.
- Research framework: The study applies a triadic design perspective that balances reality, meaning, and play during serious-game development.Reality concerns connection to the physical world, meaning concerns the value achieved, and play concerns playful activities.
- Research framework: The review asks which hazards are simulated and which teaching, navigation, sensory, narrative, and character elements are used.These questions address both the software system and the broader gaming environment.
- Research framework: The research questions examine pedagogical impact, behavioral impact, participation experience, and the hardware and software systems underlying IVR serious games.These dimensions cover teaching methods, navigation, sensory stimulation, narrative, non-playable characters, and hazard simulation.
- Research framework: The framework treats pedagogical impact, behavioral impact, and participation experience as distinct meanings connected to the serious-game design process.Participation experience is positioned as an aspect for measuring and refining prototypes.
4.2 Identifying the Relevant Work
The review identifies relevant studies by requiring immersive virtual reality, serious games, and evacuation training or research, then applying database searches, snowballing, and PRISMA filtering.
- Eligibility and search: Eligible papers had to address immersive virtual reality, serious games, and evacuation training or research.IVR was treated as a mechanism added onto serious games, while serious games remained the key content.
- Eligibility and search: The search covered Scopus and Engineering Village, with Google Scholar snowballing used to identify additional relevant papers.Backward and forward snowballing complemented the database searches.
- Eligibility and search: The search string combined virtual reality, virtual environment, virtual simulation, or VR with evacuation to address inconsistent terminology.The terminology strategy was designed to maximize publication coverage.
- Eligibility and search: PRISMA filtering excluded papers without IVR serious-game evacuation content and retained studies proposing or evaluating prototypes with experiments and outcome analysis.The criteria targeted research spanning prototype development, experimentation, and evaluation or validation.
- Eligibility and search: 15 papers were identified as relevant to the systematic literature review after filtering and snowballing.The review discusses all 15 eligible papers in depth.
4.3 Assessing the Quality of Studies
Study quality was assessed using three dimensions scored by two raters, producing final scores from 3 to 9 and identifying stronger empirical evidence among higher-scoring papers.
- Quality assessment: Each paper was assessed for prototype design, methods and analysis, and relevance to the review questions.Each dimension received a score from 1 to 3, representing low, medium, or high quality.
- Quality assessment: Final scores ranged from 3 to 9 after summing the three dimension scores and averaging the two raters’ totals.A score of 3 represented low quality, while 9 represented high quality.
- Quality assessment: 6.63 was the mean quality rating across the 15 papers, and 6 was the modal score.The scores were summarized in a histogram.
- Quality assessment: 12 papers rated 6 or higher and were considered higher-quality studies providing stronger empirical evidence for the review objective.The appendix highlights these higher-quality papers alongside their objectives, methods, results, and conclusions.
4.4 Summarizing the Evidence
All 15 eligible papers were coded and analyzed with a data-extraction spreadsheet covering the review’s research aspects and questions.
- Evidence synthesis: The eligible papers were coded and analyzed using a data-extraction spreadsheet containing the review’s research aspects and questions.Because only 15 papers were eligible, all were discussed in depth.
4.4.1 Gaming Outcomes and Measures
The review identifies pedagogical and behavioral outcomes for IVR serious games, showing their use for delivering evacuation knowledge and analyzing behavior across emergency settings. It also catalogs measures for learning, behavior, and participation experience.
- Outcomes: IVR serious games were used as pedagogical tools in four papers, behavioral tools in nine, and both in one paper.
- Pedagogical outcomes: The reviewed studies addressed evacuation best practices, self-protection skills, and spatial knowledge as learning outcomes.
- Pedagogical outcomes: IVR serious games improved fire-safety knowledge, knowledge retention, and knowledge transfer relative to traditional approaches across the reviewed pedagogical studies.
- Behavioral outcomes: Behavioral applications examined evacuation facility designs, compliance with instructions, hazard awareness, behavior recognition, social influence, way-finding, and behavior-model validation.
- Behavioral measures: Behavioral studies recorded outcomes such as movement paths, evacuation time, lighting preferences, and exit choices under controlled emergency scenarios.
- Participation experience: Participation experience was assessed through self-reported psychological measures for usability and device-based physiological measures for subconscious activity.
4.4.2 Gaming Environment
The review organizes IVR serious-game environments around teaching, navigation, narrative, hazard simulation, sensory stimulation, and non-playable characters. These design choices shape learning, progression, realism, and behavioral responses, while several effects remain insufficiently compared.
- Environment components: Six gaming-environment components were identified: teaching method, navigation solution, narrative method, hazard simulation, senses stimulation, and non-playable characters.
- Teaching Methods: Teaching methods either provide feedback after participants respond or give instructions before emergency events.
- Teaching Methods: The reviewed studies reported positive evacuation-knowledge acquisition for both teaching methods, but did not establish which method was more efficient.
- Navigation Solutions: Navigation design is linked to motion sickness because perceived virtual movement can conflict with participants’ physical movement.
- Narrative Methods: Narratives used action-driven, instruction-driven, performance-driven, or surroundings-driven methods, with different effects on movement freedom and storyline progression.
- Hazard Simulation: Hazards were represented at static or dynamic levels, with dynamic hazards interacting with participants and producing negative experiences such as injury, bleeding, drowning, or reduced visibility.
- Hazard Simulation: IVR can simulate dangerous situations without exposing people to real-life risk, while dynamic hazards can reinforce impressions of emergency consequences.
4.5 Interpreting the Findings
The framework organizes IVR serious-game development around intended outcomes, teaching methods, equipment-specific navigation, simulated hazards, and iterative evaluation. It connects design and implementation choices with learning outcomes and participation experience measures.
- Researchers should define expected outcomes first and deliver pre-defined evacuation knowledge effectively to achieve pedagogical impacts.
- Feedback after responses and instruction before responses are suitable teaching methods, with selection based on participant background and game narrative.Learning outcomes can be evaluated using multiple measures, and data recording can capture movement paths, evacuation times, and exit choices.
- Equipment selection must align with navigation solutions because head-mounted and projection-based displays require different navigation approaches.
- Static hazards constrain movement and can direct participants through predefined storylines, whereas dynamic hazards offer greater flexibility within simulation events.
- Implementation measures expected outcomes and participation experience, using unsatisfactory results to guide iterative improvement until research requirements are met.
5. Conclusions
The review examined IVR serious games for evacuation training and research and proposed a framework connecting factors for their development and implementation. Its scope is limited by reliance on empirical prototype evidence and by the need for further framework validation.
- The review explored pedagogical and behavioral outcomes, gaming-environment development, and measures of outcomes and participation experience.
- The proposed conceptual framework identifies and connects factors supporting IVR serious-game development and implementation for building evacuation training and research.
- The review excluded theoretical papers without case studies, so its analyzed evidence comes from empirical prototypes in existing literature.
- The framework requires further study and validation, and future research should address underrepresented earthquake contexts and child participants.
- Only one of 15 reviewed papers addressed earthquake evacuation, while most concerned fire evacuation; only one study used children as participants.
Appendix A. Summary of the eligible papers (higher quality papers marked with *).
The eligible studies examined immersive evacuation scenarios, training approaches, behavioral influences, and participant outcomes. Across these studies, IVR environments were used to assess way-finding, evacuation decisions, knowledge, emotional responses, and engagement.
- Methods: Training and environment studies assessed knowledge, spatial ability, orientation, physiological and psychological responses, engagement, enjoyment, and comprehension.Measures included test scores, spatial and configuration knowledge, emotional scales, physiological indicators, motivation, and perceived usability.
- Results: Behavioral results also identified risks and moderators, including smoke-related way-finding problems, social influence on decisions, and differences between dynamic and static signage.Some participants selected longer routes or moved toward smoke, while signs and social information altered evacuation behavior under particular conditions.
- Study objectives: Participants’ route and destination choices were analyzed alongside movement, exit selection, waiting time, and compliance with emergency signage.Measures included route choice, destination choice, exit choices, waiting times, egress time, and behavioral compliance.
- Results: Results reported improved fire-safety knowledge, longer-term knowledge retention, better hazard awareness, stronger spatial performance, and higher motivation or engagement in selected IVR studies.Other findings concerned positive effects of way-finding lighting, social influence on route choice, and behavioral changes produced by static or dynamic signs.