DEVELOPMENT OF A VIRTUAL REALITY-BASED FIRESAFETY TRAINING SYSTEM FOR APARTMENT RESIDENTS

Project supervisor: Tolegen Kadirbaiuly Akhmetov, PhD

Project Goal: To develop an interactive virtual reality-based fire safety training system for residents of multi-apartment buildings.

1. Conducting a literature review on the research topic, including the analysis and study of modern methods and algorithms for fire safety training, as well as the analysis of the use of VR technologies in this field.
2. Develop realistic and interactive fire emergency behavior scenarios;
3. Create 3D models of environments and objects, including NPCs, fire propagation, and smoke systems;
4. Build a user interaction system using the Meta Quest Pro headset;
5. Conduct a comparative experiment between traditional video-based training and VR-based training;
6. Analyze the experiment results: knowledge evaluation, reaction time, and level of immersion;
7. Publish the research outcomes.

 is to create an interactive fire safety training system using virtual reality technology that can simulate real emergency scenarios and effectively teach users how to act during fires in a safe virtual environment.

1. A detailed analysis of existing literature and immersive fire safety training methods was conducted.
2. A VR-based fire safety training system was developed for apartment residents using the Meta Quest Pro headset. The system features interactive fire simulation with physical modeling of fire spread and smoke, and allows users to activate alarms and use fire extinguishers.
3. A realistic virtual environment was created, including rooms, non-player characters (NPCs), and interactable elements, providing high immersion and emergency scenario imitation.
4. An experiment with 20 participants was conducted. They were divided into two equal groups: one trained using the VR system, the other with traditional video instruction. The VR group scored an average of 10.9 (SD = 2.37) on the knowledge test, while the video group scored 7.3 (SD = 1.33), demonstrating the higher effectiveness of the VR approach.
5. The average evacuation time in the VR group was 1 minute 57 seconds. Male participants completed tasks 9 seconds faster than female participants. All users successfully evacuated, but only 70% activated the fire alarm.
6. Presence Questionnaire results showed high user immersion: the average presence score was 108.5, exceeding the normative benchmark. The highest scores were in realism andinteraction.
7. A Certificate of Authorship has been obtained for a computer program (VR-based fire safety training).
8. An article related to the project has been submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific journal included in the list approved by the Committee for the Control of Education and Science (CSES) of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Tolegen Akhmetov

Project Supervisor, PhD, Assistant Professor

Bekzat Ussenov

Project Member, 3rd year student, Astana IT University

Arnur Temen

Project Member, 3rd year student, Astana IT University

Zhalgas Srymbetov

Project Member, 3rd year student, Astana IT University

Kazhymukhamet Birkhanim

Project Member, 1st year student, Astana IT University

Bolatbekova Dayana

Project Member, 1st year Master student, Astana IT University