# Virtual Fire Evacuation Drills through a Web-Based Serious Game
###### Abstract  
Evacuation capacity is very important in building fire. In order to improve the safety evacuation capacity of occupants, a web-based serious game for virtual fire evacuation drills is proposed. As a prototype of the serious game, a stand-alone system for virtual drill had been developed. On this basis, the system framework of the serious game is first designed for web-based training, including the database, front and back ends. Secondly, an optimization solution including fire scenes and web codes is designed for smooth rendering performance. Lastly, a solution is designed to visualize the evacuation paths of numerous trainees, which can be used to reveal the evacuation rules, and an evaluation model of evacuation performance is created considering the features of evacuation paths and fire hazards, to provide comprehensive feedback for trainees. Thus, a convenient and accessible web-based serious game was developed. More than 100 people participated in the online virtual evacuation drill of a dormitory building fire. Through the drills, the average evacuation time of the trainees decreases from 79.77 s to 54.32 s, and the safety scores of the trainees improve from 74.71 to 81.21. Therefore, the evacuation abilities of trainees gradually improve, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the drill. Consequently, virtual fire drills using a web-based serious game can play an important role in improving the evacuation ability. fire evacuation; serious game; virtual drill; web; safety +
Footnote †: journal:training, making it difficult to reveal the characteristics of multiple people evacuation. To enable greater participation in fire evacuation training, web-based serious games need to be developed, thus eliminating the process of downloading and installing, which is beneficial for popularization. In this way, the evacuation characteristics of numerous trainees can be revealed through convenient online training, which can better guide the trainees to efficiently evacuate at the time of the fire. To establish a web-based serious game for fire evacuation drills, the following three challenges need to be resolved:  
1. System design of a web-based serious game. As mentioned earlier, most of the research on serious games is based on stand-alone programs, and a web-based serious game for virtual fire drills has not been fully studied. Designing a workable system is a primary and critical issue in a web-based serious game. 2. Optimization of the rendering performance. The rendering performance of the virtual fire scene drill should be as smooth as possible. However, the models of fire evacuation scenes are generally large in volume because of accurate and realistic effects, leading to slow rendering performance. Compared to stand-alone games, fewer rendering resources can be employed in web games. Therefore, reducing the size of fire evacuation scenes and improving the rendering performance is challenging for web-based serious games. 3. Evaluation of the drills. The evacuation behaviors of the trainees need to be evaluated so that the trainees can improve their evacuation capabilities according to the feedback evaluation results. For such evaluation, different types of data (e.g., location, smoke density, and temperature) in the process of evacuation drills can be collected. However, owing to the variety of drill data and the complexity of evacuation characteristics, it is difficult to evaluate the drill in web-based serious games. To resolve Challenge (1), some existing serious games [22; 23; 24; 25; 26] provide good references. For instance, [PERSON] et al. [27; 28] developed a stand-alone serious game of a fire evacuation training system for people trapped in fires and firefighters engaged in rescue efforts. This serious game is based on the numerical simulation data of fire and fully considers the physical collision of occupants, which guarantees the effectiveness of evacuation training. Additionally, some web-based serious games have been developed in other fields [11; 13; 19]. For example, [PERSON] et al.