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 fullscale
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.
Keywords
fire evacuation, passenger train, virtual reality
MAEJO INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY