Virtual Reality-Based Behavioral Studies of Individual Evacuees during Building Emergencies

时间：11月21日星期二15:30-16:30

地点：地坤楼409会议室

报告人：李楠副教授

主持人：肖岩教授

报告内容：

Understanding evacuee behaviors is of significant importance to predict and manage the evacuation process during building emergencies. Various evacuation simulation models have been developed in the literature. Most of these models focus on crowd evacuee behaviors, and are largely limited by oversimplification of behavioral patterns of individual evacuees, the understanding of which has to date remained limited and mostly relied on descriptive sociological models. A major challenge in developing comprehensive, computable and predictive individual evacuee behavior models is the accessibility to sufficient reliable behavior data. Using latest advances in virtual reality (VR) technologies, a psychology experiment platform is developed, which enables evacuation behavioral experiments in immersive virtual environments (IVEs) and controlled setups, and collection of rich, fine-grained evacuee behavior data. Using this platform, the behavioral experiments’ ecological validity, namely the extent to which experiment subjects’ perception and responses can be generalized to real-life settings, is first examined. The study proposes an approach for assessing the sense of presence of the subjects performing virtual evacuation tasks. This approach integrates a set of subjective and objective measures to assess the subjects’ emotional responses, including emotional valence and emotional arousal, which are highly reflective of their sense of presence in the IVEs. This assessment can serve as an indirect indicator of the overall validity of the experiments. Another ongoing study aims to examine the impact of spatial knowledge on evacuee behavior and evacuation efficiency. Specifically, the study examines how active and passive spatial learning, two ways of developing prior spatial knowledge of the environment, influence people’s ability to find the exit of this environment, and how the stress and time pressure in fire evacuation interact with the prior knowledge of the environment and subsequently influence their escape from the fire emergency.

报告人简介：

Dr. Nan Li is Associate Professor at the Department of Construction Management, Tsinghua University, China. He is Assistant Dean of the School of Civil Engineering and Director of the Institute of Sustainable Urbanization at Tsinghua University.

Dr. Li graduated from the University of Southern California in 2014, where he received a PhD degree in civil engineering and Master degrees in civil engineering and computer science. He received the PhD Achievement Award and the Best Dissertation Award upon his graduation. He is a Member of American Society of Civil Engineers, and a licensed civil engineer (PE) registered in California. Dr. Li’s research interests include informatics and intelligence for buildings and infrastructure systems, and urban and community resilience. He has published nearly 50 journal and conference papers, many of which are the most read and cited papers in the journals or won best conference paper and poster awards. He currently serves as associate editor of Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, editorial board member of Journal of Management in Engineering and Smart Infrastructure and Construction, reviewer of nearly twenty journals, and board member of the International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction. He is one of the youngest researchers that are selected into the renowned One Thousand Young Talents Plan in China, and was recently selected into the “30 under 30” list of year 2017 by Forbes China.