Prototyping of an Earthquake Evacuation Learning Game with VR Reproducing the Environment That Is Familiar to Learners

Abstract

Recently, big earthquakes happen worldwide, and UNDRR adopted the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. Learning about earthquakes is getting more important. When learning about disasters, it is important to treat them as it is their own problem. For this, Mitsuhara proposed the GLI (Global, Local, and Individual) model of disaster education. To make learners learn as it is their problem, we need to develop an environment that they can perform the local and individual disaster learning. It is also important to keep learning about disasters. For this, we prototyped evacuation learning game with VR, and the game reproduces the environment that is familiar to learners with VR to achieve local and individual level disaster learning. In this study, we reproduced building No.5 in our university where students mainly used every day because the target students of the game are our university students. We also conducted a preliminary experimental evaluation of the learning game. The results showed that (1) the reproduced environment can encourage learners to imagine a situation that an earthquake happens at the place that is familiar to them, (2) the game factors may motivate learners to learn about disasters.