An Immersive Virtual Reality Serious Game for Preparing Citizens to Flood Emergencies in Urban Built Environments
Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Flood emergencies in urban areas can expose citizens to life-threatening conditions, especially if they do not activate proper response and evacuation behaviors. In fact, individuals can perform unsafe choices, such as spending excessive time in risky areas and activities, or select wrong evacuation paths, potentially being injured or trapped by critical floodwater levels. Citizens' preparedness can support the adoption of correct behaviours and help limit additional risks in dangerous scenarios and immediate decisions. Anticipatory competences should comprise the full sequence of emergency management (situational awareness, decision-making under uncertainty, safe movement towards gathering areas), and they could be developed through engaging training activities, such as using serious gaming techniques. In view of the above, the current work proposes an Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) serious game to train citizens for flood risk scenarios in indoor and outdoor areas of urban built environments. The game is composed of different IVR indoor (home) and outdoor (an historical city centre along a river) scenes and learning checkpoints, organized into more than 10 different game storylines. Trainees (citizens) enter the IVR urban environment and are involved in warning, decision, movement and safe-arrival phases, enabling practice of protective behaviours and route choice under evolving hazards. At each decision point, the trainees collect (or lose) points, which contribute to the final score, while some critical choices can lead to “game over” consequences. The game is adapted to include scenes from the historical city centre of Senigallia, Italy, which has been selected as pilot for its application. According to the first testing session with 25 university volunteers, the IVR game showed acceptable usability, relevant levels of engagement, and limited self-reported discomfort. These preliminary results suggest potential for supporting flood-preparedness training in urban settings, while further validation is required to assess behavioural effectiveness and decision-making quality.
Institution: Marche Polytechnic University
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7204200309