Fire is the most frequent disaster in the built environment causing huge economic losses and jeopardizing human safety. Understanding human behavior in fire (HBiF) and facilitating emergency evacuation is one of the key issues in ensuring human safety in indoor environments, however, HBiF driven by the cognitive process is complex and uncontrolled. Virtual reality (VR) -based experiments offer a possible pathway for researchers to ensure reproducibility of findings and understanding HBiF in hazardous environments. Additionally, remote VR is expected to be an innovative way for crowd evacuation researches besides evacuation simulations.

Jieyu’s research focus on understanding HBiF from the perspective of cognitive processes with VR technology and physiological signals (e.g., ECG, EDA, cortisol, eye tracking, etc.), including individual wayfinding and social influence of others in evacuation.