Immersive virtual reality for improving flood evacuation behaviour and self-efficacy

Abstract

The series of evacuation drills implemented for flood disasters were mostly through monotonous traditional pedagogical methods. The application of these methods was observed to be ineffective because of the inability to realistically represent the actual dangers and have a significant impact on behavioural changes. Therefore, this research aimed to develop and test the effectiveness of Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) Flood Evacuation to improve knowledge and self-efficacy regarding flood disasters. This was achieved through the adoption of a one-group pretest-posttest design as well as the selection of 45 students as participants. The results showed that IVR significantly improved the knowledge of the best evacuation practices and self-efficacy (T-test, p < 0.005) with long-term influence on the memory of the participants. These observations supported the previous studies that reported the ability of virtual reality in ensuring longer knowledge retention compared to traditional learning methods.

Contribution: Immersive virtual reality was found to have the potential to be applied as an interesting pedagogical tool for flood evacuation training. The application of the method for drills was discovered to be more efficient, cost-effective, and provide enhanced knowledge retention for users. This research shows the significance of seamlessly incorporating knowledge with flood evacuation practices through IVR in disaster education programmes. The integration is important in the transformation of knowledge into actionable steps, thereby enhancing overall preparedness.