Research Title:
Application of Virtual Reality to Study Human Behaviour in Fire – Individual movement within crowds
Main Supervisor:
Professor Daniel Nilsson
Co-supervisors:
Assoc. Prof. Ruggiero Lovreglio
Professor Rob Lindeman
Research interests:
My area of expertise is fire safety engineering, specifically the aspect of human behaviour in fire. My main interest is the interaction between individuals when in a crowd. This interaction of pedestrian movement is also of interest to a number of disciplines such as crowd event planning, architectural design. I work across both the HITLab and the VR evacuation lab at CNRE where I conduct my PhD research which explores the use of immersive virtual reality to study individual movement in crowds. The research involves experiments which test the research question; Can VR be used as a valid means of collecting individual movement data for pedestrians in crowds? I am also an interested in the collection of pre-movement data from hospital evacuation.
Academic history:
- BE(Hons) Mechanical engineering – University of Auckland,
- MEMgt (Hons) – University of Auckland
- MEngSt (Fire) – University of Canterbury
Publications:
- de Schot, L., Nilsson, D., Lovreglio, R., Cunningham, T., & Till, S. (2023). Exploring single-line walking in immersive virtual reality. Fire Safety Journal, 140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2023.103882
