VRFIS: an immersive framework for real-time flood monitoring, visualization, and interactive environmental analysis
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT The rapid evolution of Mixed Reality (MR) technologies, particularly Virtual Reality (VR), offers powerful new means of visualizing and interacting with geographic and environmental data. This paper presents Virtual Reality Flood Information System (VRFIS), an immersive information platform developed using Unreal Engine 5 and Google Photo Realistic 3D Tiles to enable real-time exploration of high-resolution geospatial datasets across the United States. VRFIS integrates photorealistic terrain rendering, dynamic environmental simulation, and multimodal interaction within a fully immersive 3D environment, allowing users to visualize, query, and interpret complex environmental phenomena with unprecedented realism and spatial context. By coupling high-fidelity visualization with live data streams from authoritative sources such as USGS and NOAA, the system serves as an intuitive visualization and educational tool for environmental science, hydrology, urban planning, and geography education. To assess the system's practical utility and identify usability constraints, a qualitative expert evaluation was conducted with domain specialists, including hydrologists and geospatial analysts. The heuristic feedback demonstrates that while existing 2D web-based platforms excel at quantitative data management, immersive environments like VRFIS uniquely enhance spatial awareness, promote experiential learning, and provide volumetric context that can support environmental decision-making.
Source: Journal of Hydroinformatics
Institutions: University of Iowa, Tulane University
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
Award: G136433309
OpenAlex ID: W7213448677