VR-GeoLab: a platform for multi-hazard understanding and risk communication

During the last decades, the compound effect of natural hazards such as landslides, floods/flash floods, and earthquakes highlighted a priority field of scientific research (multi-hazard risk), derived from the close connection with their increasingly accentuated impacts on society and the environment. The amplification of consequences as a result of complex interaction mechanisms leads to increased exposure and prolonged recovery time for affected communities, thereby reducing overall resilience. The very recent development of new theoretical-methodological concepts, such as Virtual Reality (VR) offers enhanced opportunities to explore evolutionary processes of landforms and resulting landscapes, enabling the discovery, calibration, and validation of advanced solutions for risk perception, understanding, awareness, communication, and management. In this context, and in response to the challenges of the contemporary period, marked by rapid environmental changes, a new VR platform started to be developed within the SPEER-A (Interreg) project, focusing on the Vrancea seismic region, the most important intermediate-depth seismic source of Europe, an area intensely affected by earthquakes, landslides, and flash floods. The objectives of the VR-GeoLab are: i) to create a VR-based transdisciplinary solution (following a co-creation, co-design, and co-dissemination approach) of real-time interaction of scientific research products with other stakeholders involved in the management of multi-hazard scenarios, which ii) integrates the results of scientific research into a modern, enhanced reality and collaborative knowledge and relational framework, and iii) increase the societal resilience by improving the spatio-temporal perception of the multi-hazard environments through immersive, virtual representations of hazards’ interaction, conditioning factors, exposure, and vulnerability. In this way, VR-GeoLab provides an innovative platform for promoting scientific resultsto a wide range of stakeholders, in a multi-dimensional integrated, interactive, immersive and collaborative way, thus contributing with consistent added value not only for educational promotion and capacity building, but also for opening new research horizons through the integration of advanced digital interaction tools in future applications of international research and educational projects. Acknowledgements: this work is supported by the Interreg NEXT Black Sea Basin Programme under grant agreement no. BSB01197 - Strengthening and Promoting Earthquake Emergency Response and Rescue Capacity in the BSB Area (SPEER-A).