Using Serious Games to Train Evacuation Behaviour

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Unity3D-based serious game designed for fire evacuation training, demonstrating its effectiveness in teaching evacuation procedures and highlighting the influence of gaming experience on performance.

Contribution

The paper presents a virtual fire evacuation training tool using serious games, validated through user testing, and analyzes the impact of gaming experience on evacuation performance.

Findings

Users learned evacuation procedures through the game

Performance improved with higher video game experience

The game effectively simulates evacuation scenarios

Abstract

Emergency evacuation plans and evacuation drills are mandatory in public buildings in many countries. Their importance is considerable when it comes to guarantee safety and protection during a crisis. However, sometimes discrepancies arise between the goals of the plan and its outcomes, because people find it hard to take them very seriously, or due to the financial and time resources required. Serious games are a possible solution to tackle this problem. They have been successfully applied in different areas such as health care and education, since they can simulate an environment/task quite accurately, making them a practical alternative to real-life simulations. This paper presents a serious game developed using Unity3D to recreate a virtual fire evacuation training tool. The prototype application was deployed which allowed the validation by user testing. A sample of 30 individuals tested the evacuating scenario, having to leave the building during a fire in the shortest time possible. Results have shown that users effectively end up learning some evacuation procedures from the activity, even if only to look for emergency signs indicating the best evacuation paths. It was also evidenced that users with higher video game experience had a significantly better performance.