Virtual reality for fire evacuation from passenger train

Fire safety is an important research area in the rail transportation system. In the event of an emergency, it is important to evacuate railway vehicle in a safe and appropriate manner to minimise injuries and reduce fatalities. Rail companies traditionally conduct full-scale tests. These tests present several drawbacks such as their unrealistic results and their cost-effectiveness. This has led to the necessity of innovating approaches for fire safety training. In this context, new technologies have been employed for evacuation training such as virtual reality (VR). The purpose of this article is to highlight the state of the art of VR simulation of train fire evacuation and examine how VR studies complement conventional research approaches such as drills, laboratory tests and computational models. The findings reveal that VR technologies have great potential for serving as a promising complementary laboratory tool to improve fire safety. Finally, the necessity of new VR researches on passenger train fire evacuation is addressed.