Browsing by Author "Quagliarini E"

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    A non-immersive virtual reality serious game application for flood safety training
    (Elsevier B.V., 2023-08-12) D'Amico A; Bernardini G; Lovreglio R; Quagliarini E
    Various methodologies and technologies have been developed and tested to train communities for natural hazards and investigate human behaviour. The combination of Virtual Reality (VR) and Serious Games (SG) represents a promising solution to expose communities to different hazardous scenarios in a totally safe way and without exposing the testers to any real risks. Previous studies tested VR SG for several different natural hazards and safety training scenarios, but only a few applications have been proposed within the context of flood safety training. Furthermore, comprehensive prototyping works aimed at evaluating VR SG applications in terms of knowledge acquisition, self-efficacy and user experience, are still needed. This work proposes a novel non-immersive VR SG in the context of users' safety in the event of flooding in the urban built environment, pursuing the users' safety training. The proposed application is based on several modules, which can be combined to form different storylines and training objectives. The VR SG capabilities are demonstrated here by firstly considering one significant storyline. Results show a significant increase in self-efficacy and safety knowledge after the VR experience, thus suggesting the possibility to exploit it for increasing users’ awareness and preparedness. Furthermore, results also demonstrate the existence of similarities between real-world behaviours and VR choices by the tested individuals, thus suggesting how an application of this kind could also be used to support the development and validation of flood evacuation simulators.
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    Can active and passive wayfinding systems support fire evacuation in buildings? Insights from a virtual reality-based experiment
    (Elsevier B.V., 2023-05-24) Bernardini G; Lovreglio R; Quagliarini E; D'Orazio M
    Occupant safety in case of building fires depends on the selection of proper evacuation routes. Today, several passive and active Emergency Wayfinding Systems (EWSs) have been proposed to support occupant route choices. Nevertheless, their effectiveness should be accurately assessed before being manufactured and used. In this sense, Virtual Reality (VR) could support the design and preliminary evaluation phases, using the Theory of Affordances to quantitatively verify if the EWSs are correctly visible, understood, and able to support users in fulfilling the evacuation goal. This work hence aims at comparing the efficiency of different EWSs in terms of the Theory of Affordances through a VR experiment involving more than 70 volunteers of different ages. The experimental setup focuses on three types of EWSs (punctual and photoluminescent; passive, continuous and photoluminescent; continuous and active) and lights-on, lights-off and smoke conditions in an educational building. Results mainly indicate that the passive EWSs receive a higher rating while supporting the direction selection, while the active EWS is more effective along mono-directional paths. The work also confirms the capabilities of the proposed combined affordances-based and VR-based approach, boosting future works and suggesting additional comparisons between real-world and VR experiments on emergency wayfinding tasks and systems.