Thesis Description & Objectives
Several collaborations are currently in place with the Piedmont Region Civil Protection and Forest Firefighting Unit, which are actively involved in emergency management and first responder training. In this context, a number of serious games and interactive experiences leveraging Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) technologies have already been developed to support the education and training of firefighters, volunteers, students, and decision makers.
Multiple thesis opportunities are available and will be developed mainly at Politecnico di Torino in collaboration with the above-mentioned institutions.
The proposed activities build upon an existing MR-based training ecosystem previously developed through several research and thesis projects, including the “Augmented Sand Table for Forest Firefighting”, currently supporting wildfire simulation scenarios based on the Cell2Fire framework. Current research activities focus on extending this ecosystem toward more immersive, scalable, and interoperable XR training solutions for emergency-response scenarios, with particular emphasis on wildfire management and hydrogeological risk mitigation. The activities may involve the use of Unity, XR headsets, simulation middleware, networking solutions, and advanced interaction techniques.
The objective of the first thesis is to extend and enhance existing immersive XR training applications for first responders operating in complex emergency scenarios, including wildfire suppression activities involving both ground and aerial operations. The work may address the integration of more realistic environmental simulations, interactive tools, and collaborative functionalities aimed at improving training effectiveness and operational realism. Particular attention may be devoted to fire and smoke simulation, immersive interaction techniques, real-time performance optimization, and interoperability with external simulation systems.
The goal of the second thesis is to evolve the existing simulation ecosystem through the development of advanced authoring tools and workflow solutions aimed at simplifying and accelerating the generation, configuration, and customization of XR training scenarios and case studies. The work may address procedural and data-driven scenario generation techniques, terrain editing solutions, and interoperability mechanisms for integrating heterogeneous simulation frameworks into scalable and reusable XR training ecosystems. A particular focus may be placed on extending the current Cell2Fire-based simulation pipeline toward additional emergency-management scenarios, including the integration of simulation systems addressing hydrogeological risks such as floods and terrain evolution.
The third thesis focuses on the evolution of previously developed XR applications into a unified multi-layer and multi-user ecosystem for coordinated emergency management. The resulting platform should support supervisors and decision makers in monitoring, coordinating, and evaluating the actions of distributed teams operating within interconnected simulation scenarios. The work may involve the synchronization of heterogeneous simulators, the implementation of collaborative XR interaction paradigms, the development of monitoring and analytics solutions, and the exploration of AI-assisted approaches for scenario management and operational analysis. The thesis may also explore the integration of immersive simulation modules for aerial wildfire suppression operations involving helicopters and Canadair aircraft within larger coordinated simulation environments.
References:
– https://www.knowledge-share.eu/en/software/tavolo-di-sabbia-aumentato-per-la-lotta-agli-incendi-boschivi
– https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10902197
– https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8576892
