Fire emergency evacuation in a school building through VR

The problem of emergency evacuation of public buildings intended to accommodate large numbers of people is critical. Modern technologies such as the use of numerical simulations, virtual and augmented reality, and Agent Based models represent an opportunity to study behaviors that are difficult to reproduce in real life (e.g. explosions and fires emergencies). This may allow to improve new and existing structures with respect to such risks and therefore to improve the resilience of modern communities. In this paper, the problem of emergency fire evacuation for an existing school in the hinterland of Milan is studied. A virtual reality-based system for the simulation of fire emergency response will be developed starting from the BIM model and then moving on to a platform that ensures the interaction between human and the virtual simulation environment. The spreading of the flames and smoke is based on fire numerical simulation using computation fluid dynamic (CDF) software. Such simulation method may reproduce realistic fire processes and illustrate smoke movement by describing the configuration of fuel, ventilation, and fire source. The verification of the infrastructure response and the subsequent modification for a better emergency response represent the expected results of the research.