Everscape

Disaster evacuation studies are important but difficult or impossible to conduct in the real world. Evacuation simulation in a virtual world can be an important tool to obtain data on the escape and choice behavior of people. However, to obtain accurate “realistic” data, the engagement of participants is a key challenge. Therefore, we describe the making of an engaging evacuation scenario called “Everscape”, and highlight the collaborative effort of researchers from the informatics and transportation fields. Further, we describe encouraging results from a pilot study, which investigates the level of engagement of participants of the Everscape experience.Transport and PlanningCivil Engineering and Geoscience