Application of virtual reality for infrastructure management education in civil engineering

The cultivation of understanding regarding civil engineering in students requires them to conceive things in a manner that allows for a comprehensive grasp of practical aspects in alignment with theoretical principles. This requirement is more robust when students are being taught the aspects of infrastructure management. Visualizing the core principles and elements of infrastructure management within a full-scale context is required for students to fully understand the various concepts that compose it. Technology intervention for generating an "enhanced visualization environment" can facilitate improvement in both the teaching and learning process. Virtual Reality (VR) is technology intervention that provides real-world like sensations to its users within a simulated setting, enabling them to safely entertain, learn, experiment, and feel. This paper presents a study on the application and assessment of using virtual reality for infrastructure management education in civil engineering. A bridge inspection module was designed for a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) based system called "Projection VR", installed at the NED University Virtual Reality Center (NED VRC). Test sessions were designed to experiment with and measure the effectiveness of VR through feedback. This involved a group of 69 senior-year undergraduate students as subjects enrolled in a course on structural design and drawing. Feedback was taken through structured rubrics-based assessments. The results showed that subjects demonstrated a higher capacity for concentration in VR environments and found the VR experience to be easy to use, proximate, comfortable, and extremely captivating. More exposure and practice with VR can positively enhance students' experience. A limitation to the study presented in the paper is that for real-world situations, where damaged components of structures are often hidden, there will be need for a different modeling mechanism in order to capture such damages. Models generated through Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) scanning can serve to compensate for the limitation.