ICAT Playdate — Immersive virtual environment designed for flood risk communication

Community engagement is a vital component of climate resilience planning, enhancing a community’s ability to respond to both sudden disruptions and long-term climate stresses. Understanding flood risk is essential for developing effective resilience strategies and integrating disaster preparedness into urban planning. However, communicating climate risks presents challenges due to the long time scales and abstract nature of climate change. Immersive 3D visualization has recently gained attention as a powerful tool for improving public understanding of future flood scenarios. This study investigated the use of virtual reality (VR) to support community engagement around flash flooding in Roanoke, Virginia—a city increasingly impacted by high-intensity rainfall events. We developed a digital twin of downtown Roanoke, incorporating flood simulations within a VR platform. Twenty-five local residents participated in a 60-minute community engagement workshop consisting of three parts: (1) an introductory session on local flood impacts, (2) an immersive VR experience simulating a flood-prone site under varying conditions, followed by a survey, and (3) a facilitated group discussion to capture participants’ perceptions, concerns, and understanding of flood risks. Findings from this study will help inform Roanoke’s future flood resilience strategies and contribute to improved hazard risk communication for effective community-based resilience planning.