Abstract
The evacuation of complex buildings is a challenge under any circumstances. Fire drills are a way of training and validating evacuation plans. However, sometimes these plans are not taken seriously by their participants. It is also difficult to have the financial and time resources required. In this scenario, serious games can be used as a tool for training, planning and evaluating emergency plans. In this paper a prototype of a serious games evacuation simulator is presented. To make the environment as realistic as possible, 3D models were made using Blender and loaded onto Unity3D, a popular game engine. This framework provided us with the appropriate simulation environment. Some experiences were made and results show that this tool has potential for practitioners and planners to use it for training building occupants.

Abstract
Emergency evacuation plans and evacuation drills are mandatory in public buildings in many countries. Their importance is considerable when it comes to guarantee safety and protection during a crisis. However, sometimes discrepancies arise between the goals of the plan and its outcomes, because people find it hard to take them very seriously, or due to the financial and time resources required. Serious games are a possible solution to tackle this problem. They have been successfully applied in different areas such as health care and education, since they can simulate an environment/task quite accurately, making them a practical alternative to real-life simulations. This paper presents a serious game developed using Unity3D to recreate a virtual fire evacuation training tool. The prototype application was deployed which allowed the validation by user testing. A sample of 30 individuals tested the evacuating scenario, having to leave the building during a fire in the shortest time possible. Results have shown that users effectively end up learning some evacuation procedures from the activity, even if only to look for emergency signs indicating the best evacuation paths. It was also evidenced that users with higher video game experience had a significantly better performance.

Abstract
In game development there is often the need to generate realistic urban environments, i.e. 3D virtual environments that replicate existing urban areas. However, modeling such spaces using traditional techniques is both too slow and too expensive. A good solution is the use of procedural modeling techniques to automate the process. However these techniques require large amounts of geospatial data, which are usually stored in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This paper presents a pipeline for the integration of both geometric and semantic data from GIS data sources into procedural modeling techniques used for the generation of 3D virtual urban environments. GIS data can already be used in procedural modeling tools but these do not provide an easy and uniform way to incorporate semantic information from different data sources. To solve this problem, the proposed pipeline is capable of transforming semantic and geometric information from different sources into 3D environments that replicate specific urban areas.

Abstract
Even though we now witness a popular use of location-based mobile games, the player experience in these applications is always limited by the errors of common location technologies, especially in indoor scenarios. This paper describes the way we minimize this problem in our game development platform, by levering the potential behind smartphone sensors to estimate players' trajectories. Our approach is based on a Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) algorithm that combines methods to determine orientation, detect steps and estimate their length. Other typical multiplayer mobile games problems, like network latency, are also briefly addressed. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Abstract
Serious games have been used with success for training field operatives in tasks where there is a danger of injury or life threatening situations. This paper presents the development of a serious game aimed at the areas of security and safety supporting the training of specialists through supervised situational scenarios. The training plans involve security against third parties, focusing on social level security, and also safety actions on events such as floods and fires. The game provides a 3D virtual environment of the real location/facility to be secured and a multiplayer platform to allow collaborative training and supervising. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B. V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the scientific programme committee of VS-Games 2012

Abstract
Digital maps are very commonly used in the analysis, administration and representation of urban spaces. Despite the degree of information they can provide, they still pose some difficultives in decision making due to the three-dimensional nature of such ever-changing settings. This paper presents a collaborative solution for large virtual environment recreation aimed at urban landscape simulation. By providing an extensive interactive three-dimensional virtualization of a real-world city, multiple users may contribute with additional data, to either improve the model fidelity or to preview the impact of certain urban changes. This is achieved by employing procedural modeling methods to generate a basic three-dimensional city model from real-world data and a set of parameters, which can later be refined through human intervention. A multi-user simulation platform has been conceived, allowing the collaborative management of the model data, as well as the simulation of possible urban landscape changes, introducing therefore more advanced analysis and representation features to study and discuss the impact of certain decisions on the urban landscape.