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Procedia Environmental Sciences 10 (2011) 313 – 318

2011Conference
2011 3rd International 3rd International Conference on
on Environmental Environmental
Science and Information
Science and Information
Application Application Technology
Technology˄ESIAT 2011˅ (ESIAT 2011)

Development of Emergency Drills System for Petrochemical

Plants Based on WebVR
Wang Chun , Li Lei, Yuan Jiwu, Zhai Liangyun, Liu Gang
SINOPEC Safety Engineering Institute, Qingdao 266071, China

Abstract

A collaborative fire fighting training system for petrochemical enterprise was established by means of the integration
of Web and virtual reality. The architecture, key technology and function of this system were introduced. A multi-
base-state database model was used to overcome the disadvantages of traditional emergency drills. The system
immerses the user in a virtual environment with detailed interactions between the users and the virtual environment.
Finally, some examples are given to introduce the applications of the platform in petrochemical enterprises.

© 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.

Selection
Educationand/or peer-review under responsibility of Conference ESIAT2011 Organization Committee.
Society

Keywords: WebVR; petrochemical plant; collaborative; emergency drills

1. Introduction

The daily fire-fighting drilling is of great significance to improving the firefighters’ practical combat
ability and efficiency due to the petrochemical enterprise fire has its own features and is very dangerous.
But the traditional actual combat training has the disadvantage of affecting production, dangerous, a great
deal of manpower, material and financial resources consumption, inefficient and lacks of repetition, and it
is confined to the requirement of fire equipment. Meanwhile, it needs a swift-response and well-trained
team besides each firefighter has good fire control ability in order to extinguishing the fires. So it requires

Corresponding author. Tel.:+086-532-83786575; fax: +086-532-83786554.
E-mail address: chwvip@hotmail.com.

1878-0296 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Conference ESIAT2011 Organization Committee.
doi:10.1016/j.proenv.2011.09.051
314 Wang Chun et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 10 (2011) 313 – 318

us not only to improve the firefighter’s safety culture, skills and awareness but also to develop his spirit of
teamwork and collectivism. The commander should cultivate the ability in precise, efficient and rapid
command and decision. The firefighter should cultivate excellent team collaboration ability and
communicative competence in addition to vocational training. To tackle the problem that the traditional
actual combat training is hard to satisfy the more and higher needs of emergency drills for petrochemical
plants, a novel training method is proposed.
With the development of software and hardware of computer, especially the rapid development and
widespread use of the computer network, graphics and virtual reality (VR) technologies, the web virtual
reality (WebVR) technology on emergency drills become more and more important. The rapid
development of WebVR technology has made it possible to overcome these traditional disadvantages
using WebVR methods (Shih N et al., 2000; Li Wanchao et al., 2004; Freund E et al., 2003; Freund E et
al., 2005). With VR, the safety professionals and the firefighters immerse themselves in the virtual
environment with virtual accident scenes. They can interact with the virtual environment, simulate
emergency response processes and conduct training and drills. Also, the WebVR overcomes the
disadvantages of high cost, poor repetitiveness, and danger. Because of its several advantages, there are
many researches on its application both at home and abroad, and they have obtained a lot of outcome. A
simulation system has been developed by Naval Research Laboratory in order to training firefighters,
using video game-ish type technology to teach firefighters useful things (David L.Tate et al., 1997).
Shamus P Smith et al. have constructed a system to assist firefighter simulate the emergency rescues for
related accidents using VR technology (Shamus P. Smith et al., 2009). Ren Aizhu et al. have developed a
virtual reality system to simulate emergency evacuations during fires (Aizhu Ren et al., 2008). Wang dong
et al. use VR to improve the fuel depot personnel’s capability of dealing with firefighting and decision-
making (Wang Dong et al., 2006). Jin Xuesheng et al. have studied on fire virtual reality training system
of large petrochemical storage tank in the reservoir area (Jin Xuesheng et al., 2009).
This paper introduces a WebVR system for simulations, drills, and training during accident emergency
drills. This program is developed using virtual reality technology on the web application. Firefighters can
access to the program easily and experiences the equipments or safety devices in petrochemical plant
freely. Flash or video clips are applied to this simulator for firefighters’ working principles, operating
method of the accident mitigation devices, possible accident modeling in the enterprise, and accident
developing process. Also it offers the knowledge of accident mitigation device, a guide and manual for a
firefighter, a video clip of a dynamic simulation result, comprehensive countermeasures and precautions
on the web.

2. System architecture

The system architecture is shown in Figure 1. The system consists of the graphical interface, digital
factory, 3Dweb virtual reality engine, information management module, accident simulation module,
emergency response module, and databases. The accident simulation module provides a vivid virtual plant
with “real” accident scene for the users. By the emergency response module, the users can perform
emergency response drillings and trainings. The 3DWeb virtual reality engine allows the users to perform
some real-time interactive tasks in the virtual environment such as using a virtual foam extinguisher to
suppress the fire.
The system was developed using Visual C++.Net and fire dynamics simulator (FDS). Meanwhile, 3D
modeling of web is created from importing petrochemical enterprise model made by 3DS format.
 Wang Chun et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 10 (2011) 313 – 318 315

Fire development
Models and data
Personal injury Fire analysis
transformation
Fire fighting Fighting assessment
Simulation algorithm
Fire passage
planning Virtual Petroch- Virtual fire Personal injury
emical Plants fighting record

3D models Fire fighting

Fire informa- Accident Fire drilling record
tion database model database

Digital factory platform WebVR engine Data processing engine

Computer network platform

Figure 1. The Architecture of the System

3. WebVR program for petrochemical plant

3.1. 3D digital plant module

The 3D digital plant module is developed based on the self-innovating engine by SINOPEC Safety
Engineering Institute, which designed by hierarchy and consists of render layer, module layer and virtual
reality environment simulation engine.

Figure 2. Operation interface of the system

The render layer, which based on 3D OpenGL, is for generation and rending of the basic geometrical
bodies. Module layer includes storage model, motion model and constraint condition, where storage
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model is for building the 3D model of virtual scenes and objects, motion model for building activity of
virtual objects, constraint condition for connecting the above two model. Virtual reality environment
simulation is to make the interaction between the scenes and users come true and to account for the
virtual objects behaviour. 3DMAX and Microstation are used to construct the 3D scenario model of
petrochemical plant, and then with the above model and backend database detailed display of the fittings
or equipments could be realized. Users in this system are able to navigate in the virtual digital plant with
freedom and to browse or query the information of equipments and fire control facilities in real time; in
addition, the system provides the interactive control manner by using keyboard and control stick.
Operation interface consists of five parts: 3D show area, navigation bar, control bar, equipment bar and
information bar, as is shown in Figure 2.

3.2. B/S-based Network interface protocols

It’s necessary to construct proper network communication for the web-based Distributed Virtual
Reality system, while in this study Windows API is selected to construct the network communication for
its flexible property. There have two types of network interface, one is for petrochemical plant
information system, and the other is for 3D scene control software on server. For the former, we
developed a series of network interface API functions. Information such as the code of project, model and
parameter, etc. can be queried, storied and modified from this petrochemical plant information system
through API, meanwhile, the related parameters could also be transferred to virtual scene display system.

Operating client Controlling program Other clients

on server
Requesting for connection

Connecting

Sending client information

Storing client’s information
Sending information
(location, action) Delivering client information

Recording
Sending information
Delivering information (location, action)

Quit

Keep records, delete client

Delivering quit information

Figure3. Diagram of 3D model network communication

The virtual scene display system we proposed is an interactive and multiplayer program, when an
operator into the system, he could not only see himself but also other players and even the all people
 Wang Chun et al. / Procedia Environmental Sciences 10 (2011) 313 – 318 317

come later. At the same time, any operation’s information to this 3D model could be caught by each other
client-side. So the second network interface protocol is to solve the problem about each one’s information
as location, action (standing, moving, running, operations on fire equipments), the client, etc. in the
virtual scene, and to transfer this information to the server to record and evaluate the player. The
relationship of operating client, controlling program on server and other clients is shown in Figure3.

3.3. Accidents scenario simulation module based on numerical analysis

This module provides an accident scenario simulation about oil leakage like naphtha or gasoil that may
occur at plants. By using 3D numerical simulation, the influences of surroundings, for instance trees,
leaking gas, fire points, and wind speed direction, to the probably exploring procedure can be predicted in
advance. Furthermore, it offers the destroy area and corresponding emergency rescue guides for different
simulation analysis results. The numerical simulation result of gas leaking at different time is shown in
Figure 4.

˄a˅50sec ˄b˅100sec

˄c˅200sec ˄d˅240sec

Figure 4. Numerical simulation of gas leaking at different time

4. System function

The system which collaborates with petrochemical plants and fire drills is to bring about virtual reality
application system of fire-fighting drills. Considering the large devices, the system establishes a Web-VR
based multiplayer fire drills platform, its main functions including the following aspects:
x Detailed display of petrochemical plants, freedom navigation in virtual reality digital factory, real-time
browsing or querying the information of equipments and fire control facilities and interactive
controlling by using keyboard and control stick.
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x Establishment of fire disaster model in petrochemical enterprise by using numerical simulation and
virtual reality, which with real weather condition and real-time controlling of property about flame and
smoke such as scale, density and direction.
x Deployment and adjustment of the fire-fighting recourses in real time according to the presupposed
accident, including fire engine, firemen, the increase or delete of fire devices and the interaction
operations.
x Editing and dynamically display the process of the fire-fighting plan with real-time interactive 3D
model, which integrated with multi-mode data such as image, sound and text.
x In this B/S-based emergency rescue drills system of multi roles cooperative, users could log in the
server with different roles, and accept corresponding training or maneuver under the distributed data
processing.

5. Conclusions

With the combination of web and VR, this 3D virtual reality emergency drills system, based on
petrochemical plants, could provide decision support for firefighters at petrochemical industries during
training and drilling. As a completely newly training mean in petrochemical field, WebVR undoubtedly
has incomparable effect on training for its vivid virtual reality experience, where firemen can control and
extinguish fires with proper tactics and fire-fight equipments, and it will change the traditional training
mode fundamentally, furthermore, it’s of broad application and great practical significance. The frame of
this program has finished, further research will be optimizing the simulation of fire evolution and
numerical simulating the occupant evacuation.

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