A Science-Enabled Virtual Reality Demonstration to Increase Social Acceptance of Prescribed Burns

Increasing social acceptance of prescribed burns is an important element of ramping up these controlled burns to the scale required to effectively mitigate destructive wildfires through reduction of excessive fire fuel loads. As part of a Design Challenge, students created concept designs for physical or virtual installations that would increase public understanding and acceptance of prescribed burns as an important tool for ending devastating megafires. The proposals defined how the public would interact with the installation and the learning goals for participants. This poster provides an overview of the virtual reality (VR) pipeline created to develop working prototypes of the immersive experiences and VR games that were proposed by the finalists in the design challenge.