Fire Evacuation in Virtual Reality for the Hamburg Port Authority

An evacuation drill interrupts operations, and nobody can stage a real fire. That is why we recreated the Hamburg Port Authority’s building in virtual reality. Employees run through the evacuation right where they work every day: at their own workstations.

Your own building instead of a sample office

When you put on the headset, you are standing in your virtual office. The hallways, stairwells, and exits are those of the real building.

That is exactly where the value lies. A drill in an arbitrary sample building shows how an evacuation works in general. A drill in your own building shows which route you will take.

Learn first, then apply

The application is a complete safety instruction in several rounds. In the first rounds, participants learn everything they need to know about what to do in case of fire. In the later rounds, they have to apply it: the fire breaks out, and they leave the building by the right route.

Smoke the way firefighters know it

In a fire, smoke is the greatest danger. To make it spread in the simulation the way it does in reality, we worked with members of the Hamburg Fire Department.

The scenes are designed so that participants have to crouch down to stay below the smoke. They really do it, with their own bodies. This trains their muscle memory. In a real emergency, the body remembers that far better than the mind remembers bare facts.

Why an off-the-shelf solution does not fit here

For many fire safety topics, there are ready-made VR training programs, for example on using a fire extinguisher. For evacuating a specific building, there are none, and a building cannot be recreated with a construction kit.

That makes the project a good example of our approach: we develop custom solutions, but we build on our app foundation and a large library of objects and features. Learn more in the article Buy ready-made VR training or have it custom-developed?

What the training delivers

• Practice without interruption: Nobody has to evacuate the building, and operations continue.
• Experience a real emergency: Fire and smoke can be shown in VR, but not in a real drill.
• Learn with your body: Anyone who has ducked under the smoke knows what to do in a real emergency.
• Repeat as often as needed: New employees practice as soon as they start, not just at the next evacuation drill.

Learn more about training in virtual reality on our page about VR training and safety instruction.