Integrating Virtual Reality and Building Information Modeling for Improving Highway Tunnel Emergency Response Training

During the last two decades, managers have been applying Building Information Modeling (BIM) to improve the quality of management as well as operation. The effectiveness of applications within a BIM environment is restrained by the limited immersive experience in virtual environments. Defined as the immersive visualization of virtual scenes, Virtual Reality (VR) is an emerging technology that can be actively explored to expand BIM to more usage. This paper highlights the need for a structured methodology for the integration of BIM/VR and gives a generic review of BIM and VR in training platforms for management in infrastructures. The rationales for fire evacuation training were formed based on the review. Then, methods of configuring BIM + VR prototypes were formulated for emergency response in highway tunnels. Furthermore, a conceptual framework integrating BIM with VR was proposed to enable the visualization of the physical context in real-time during the training. The result indicated that, extended to the training system of highway management via the hand of BIM, the VR solution can benefit more areas, such as the cost of fire evacuation drills in highway tunnels and the tendency of accidents to occur in the emergency response.

Automated summary

This paper explores the integration of BIM and virtual reality (VR) technology to improve training in infrastructure management. By studying the applications of BIM and VR in fire evacuation and emergency response, a conceptual framework for integrating the two is proposed, enabling real-time visualization of the physical environment during training.