Avatar design and monitoring in a virtual disaster for all-hazards preparedness and infrastructure management in Brazil

Government agencies, industry consortia, and companies are interested in scenario analysis to improve preparedness plans across infrastructures, technologies, policies, and allocation of resources. This paper develops a concept for a virtual reality tool for disaster and infrastructure management in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The tool will assist in identifying the future scenarios that most matter to agency preparedness. The tool explores scenarios in the virtual environment for several types of hazards including radiological emergency, urban flooding, power grid blackout, and terrorism at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The approach tests agency influences on population behaviors and vice versa. Most past efforts have focused on decision analysis and resource allocation for preparedness. The proposed effort inverts the typical decision analysis in order to identify the scenarios of disaster that most influence agency priorities for preparedness. The results inform first-responders in the region, and contribute to the use of virtual reality in interdisciplinary work to identify the scenarios that most matter for preparedness planning.