Virtual and augmented reality technologies for emergency management in the built environments: A state-of-the-art review

With the rapid technological advancements in recent decades, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies have been increasingly adopted to address various challenges in emergency management in the built environments. This paper presents a review of state-of-the-art applications in this rapidly evolving area. A total of 84 relevant articles are identified based on searching in the Web of Science Core Collection and snowballing. These papers are then organized based on a taxonomy developed in this study. Next, a range of VR/AR applications presented in these papers that are aimed to enhance various processes associated with pre-emergency preparedness, responses during emergency and post-emergency recovery are reviewed in detail. The existing VR/AR applications are also described from a human-computer interaction perspective. Finally, current research trends, knowledge gaps and directions for future research are discussed. The findings presented in this paper are expected to provide a synthetic and critical review of state-of-the-art VR/AR applications for emergency management in the built environment and facilitate further advancements in both research and practice in this area.