# Virtual Reality for Spatial Planning and Emergency Situations: Challenges and Solution Directions
## 5 Discussion  
As discussed, the aim of this research was to conduct a review on the application of VR for spatial planning and emergency situations. The resulting findings will provide guidance for researchers on best practices for future development work in this field. We present this guidance by addressing the research questions outlined in Section 1. What Are the Challenges and Solution Directions of VR Applications for Emergency Situations in Buildings Currently Discussed in the Scientific Literature? There is a considerable volume of research that has been conducted on using VR for the built environment for general applications both relating to the solution directions and challenges. Regarding the solution directions, [40] compared a VR- and a paper-based approach to enable users choose between three different urban designs. They found that the people who used the VR application were more certain about their choice and were more engaged in the process. Another example is the research by [41], who found that VR can contribute to the level of participation, especially for younger people. The author also found that VR reduces the time that participants need to understand a design. In addition to showing the design in VR, [42] used an automatic presentation script (APS). This meant that participants went through the design in a fixed route with additional information. The users who got to see the APS understood the design much better than the people who could navigate through the design by themselves. This APS has the same role as the SCDL might have. It is intended to improve understanding of the building, which should result in improved wayfinding skills. Clearly, there are demonstratable use cases for VR in smart cities, and this is also the case when using VR for evaluating emergency evacuation behavior. An example involves the research by [29], who developed a VR application that uses realistic fire and smoke dynamics to evaluate human behavior in emergency situations, leading to improvements in safety regulations. The same application was further improved by [32]. However, bothdocumented studies focused on developing the application rather than testing it with potential users of the building. Yet, challenges were identified by [43], who tested their application with participants to compare a scenario with virtual fire and one without. They found that the group using the virtual fire application experienced more stress and took longer to find the exit. Unfortunately, the VR technique used in this research has become somewhat outdated, and, as such, cannot be compared to modern head-mounted VR devices. In the investigation by [28], a more advanced VR device was used, and in their experiment, participants explored a museum in two different ways: exploring with their own route and exploring using a predetermined route. The people who used a predetermined route were able to escape the building faster than the people who explored the building by themselves. Although this application was tested with participants and the VR device was comparable with current devices, no extra data were displayed to influence the results. This also applies to all the other aforementioned examples that used VR for emergency evacuation research. Initially, in addressing this research question, we were able to consider the challenges and solution directions under the four categories of 'application design', 'user experience', 'collecting results' and 'evaluating the application', and these are presented in summary in Table 3.