Responsible Immersive Support for Firefighter Retreat under Unreliable Spatial and Communication Information

Firefighter retreat takes place under extreme time pressure, degraded visibility, and high cognitive load, making reliable decision support both critical and difficult. Although immersive systems are increasingly considered for operational support in emergency response, the reliability of underlying spatial and communication information cannot be guaranteed in real incidents. Wireless communication may degrade intermittently, and inertial positioning may continue to provide estimates despite accumulating drift, without clear indications of reduced accuracy. When such information is presented through immersive interfaces, it risks being interpreted as more reliable than it actually is.
This project investigates how immersive systems can support firefighter retreat when spatial and coordination-related information is unreliable, incomplete, or degrading. Rather than improving sensing accuracy, the research focuses on interaction-level design: how uncertainty, degradation, and limits of reliability should be represented so that immersive cues support decision-making without increasing cognitive load or inducing false confidence. The project treats undesired effects, such as over-reliance or misinterpretation, not as user error, but as consequences of design assumptions embedded in immersive experiences.
Using firefighter retreat as a safety-critical case, the project follows four work packages. It first characterises realistic retreat scenarios and sensing breakdowns based on professional practice. It then designs immersive visual, auditory, and haptic cues that explicitly communicate uncertainty rather than precision. These cues are evaluated in controlled but realistic retreat scenarios, focusing on decision-making, cognitive load, and trust. Finally, the findings are synthesised into transferable design guidelines for responsible immersive systems.
By integrating immersive interaction research with expertise in radio-based wireless sensing and inertial navigation, the project produces empirically grounded insights into when immersive support is beneficial and when it becomes risky. Beyond firefighter operations, the results provide scalable knowledge for the IX sector on responsible uncertainty representation in safety-critical domains such as healthcare, industrial safety, and mobility.