Virtual Emergency Management

Team Name

Null VRiables

Team Members

Project Description

Thick black smoke chokes the city, as fire moves in from the West. Emergency vehicles race to the fire front, as residents, schools and businesses prepare to evacuate. As embers begin to fall on the outer suburbs, everyone's next decisions are crucial.

Situational awareness is paramount in dealing with any emergency situation. Virtual Emergency Management creates a virtual environment that allows an emergency commander to be fully immersed in the situation, through VR, knowing the position of all their resources. The direction of the wind, and position of emergency vehicles, evacuation centres, potentially threatened lives and infrastructure are all mapped out in three dimensions. They are aware of it all.

In the city, evacuations are coordinated flawlessly to available schools. The emergency vehicles are directed in the optimal plan to stop the fire, keeping a constant supply of water. Although some houses could not be saved at the city's periphery, no lives are lost.

Data Story

Our project places the user in a realistic environment utilising weather conditions, time of day, wind and terrain data. Using various relevant data sets within the VR experience allows for more effective information sharing and collaboration between agencies. It can also drive a more informed decision making process during domestic emergencies or national security events.

To demonstrate this, we created a six square kilometre area in the centre of Canberra. We then fed several large data-sets from the ACT Government and the Bureau of Meteorology into the environment to create a 3D Virtual Reality Emergency management experience. Some of the data used is obviously relevant for use within an emergency, while other data sets are seemingly unrelated until viewed in this format.

In the initial scene, emergency vehicles, displayed in Yellow, travel through the environment following the same path they took in 2016. Emergency call outs for 2016 are displayed in Red to compliment the vehicle data. Major water catchments are displayed in Blue, Schools across Canberra in Pink and sports ovals in Green. We have also used an international data-set to display airport locations to assist in managing major emergency incidents.