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The detail and representation of a spatial layout varies with scale. This affects an individual's learning effectiveness and understanding, in turn directly influencing their behavior in a fire evacuation. However, the impact of layout learning methods with different spatial scales on fire evacuation behavior, and the relationship between spatial cognition and evacuation effects, remains unclear. We conducted spatial layout learning across three scales with 81 participants and simulated a fire evacuation scenario in a mobile virtual reality for groups. We collected evacuation decision-making and user experience questionnaires as . The results demonstrate that small-scale learning objects are the easiest for participants to understand in terms of spatial layout and relationships, but their performance in fire evacuation is poor. Large-scale learning objects significantly improve participants' evacuation efficiency. Spatial layout learning plays a crucial role in fire evacuation outcomes, but traditional spatial knowledge acquisition measurement methods cannot predict fire evacuation performance. This study sheds light on how spatial cognition influences fire evacuation behavior and provides a more reliable fire evacuation simulation method based on mobile virtual reality (MVR). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In emergency situations such as fire evacuation, indoor wayfinding is a complex and challenging task that is closely related to spatial cognition and spatial ability. This study discusses the indoor wayfinding ability of evacuees from the perspective of spatial cognitive style. Spatial cognitive style can be divided into: landmark, route, survey (ordered from low to high). We measured the spatial cognitive style of participants, created a realistic virtual scene with a LiDAR scanner, and finally captured real behavior data using mobile virtual reality. The results show that people with a survey style can better extract information from an evacuation map and use it correctly, and they have a stronger sense of direction and cognition of the evacuation scene. People with a route or landmark style rely more on evacuation signs and following others to find their way and are more likely to lose their way in an emergency. These findings are helpful to explain the differences in wayfinding strategies and escape results of people in a fire evacuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crowd evacuation simulation using virtual reality (VR) is significant for digital emergency response construction. However, existing evacuation simulation studies suffer from poor adaptation to complex environments, inefficient evacuations, and poor simulation effects and do not fully consider the impacts of specific disaster environments on crowd evacuation. To more realistically express the crowd evacuation results obtained under the influence of fire environments and the subjective consciousness of pedestrians in subway stations, we designed a dynamic pedestrian evacuation path planning method under multiple constraints, analysed the influences of an 'environmental role' and a 'subjective initiative' on crowd evacuation, established an improved social force model (ISFM)-based crowd evacuation simulation method in VR, developed a prototype system and conducted experimental analyses. The experimental results show that the crowd evacuation time of the ISFM is affected by the disaster severity. In simulation experiments without disaster scenarios, the improved model's crowd evacuation efficiency improved by averages of 12.53% and 15.37% over the commercial Pathfinder software and the original social force model, respectively. The method described herein can effectively support real-time VR crowd evacuation simulation under multiexit and multifloor conditions and can provide technical support for emergency evacuation learning and management decision analyses involving subway fires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]