Virtual Reality Application to Study Occupants’ Behavior in Underground Space Emergency Event

Safety is one of the most critical parameters in an underground project. A typical example of such an underground project is the METRO, which is an integral part of the daily lives of millions of citizens and the study for an effective security plan is of high importance. The organized evacuation during an emergency contributes in reducing the overall risk. Evacuation simulation models take into account several parameters and contribute significantly in developing an effective evacuation plan, however, they fail to consider the actual behavior of people, and engineers make assumptions when conducting the simulations. In the current study, a Virtual Reality (VR) application is developed to assess people’s behavior in a METRO station evacuation. According to the scenario, they have to evacuate a platform in which a fire occurs. For each participant, the time, the exit route choice, and the distance traveled are recorded. The experiment resulted in a safe evacuation for all users. The high variation of exit route choice and the VR application enable the evacuation to be simulated with a high degree of realism and in a safe environment.