September 2025 Meetup: VR and AR for Civil Engineering and Safety Training

Welcome to our September AR/VR meetup - on Wednesday, September 24th at 6:45pm for a 7pm start.

As usual, this will be held at the Auckland Bioengineering Institite Building (70 Symonds St) at the University of Auckland.

This month Professor Ruggiero (“Rino”) Lovreglio from Massey University will talk about using VR and AR for Civil Engineering and Safety Training.

This presentation provides an overview of how VR and AR can support the built environment sector: by offering tools to design safer buildings and transportation infrastructure, by helping to understand how people behave during disasters, and by delivering next-generation safety training solutions. It also presents case studies that illustrate both the benefits and the limitations of using VR and AR.

Professor Ruggiero (“Rino”) Lovreglio is a Professor in Digital Built Environment at Massey University and Rutherford Discovery Fellow for Royal Society Te Apārangi, New Zealand. His research focuses on human behaviour in disasters, evacuation modelling, and the use of new technologies (i.e., VR, AR and AI) for safety training. Since completing his PhD on fire-evacuation decision making in 2016, he has produced more than 100 peer-reviewed journal publications, led a Marsden-funded project, and served as associate editor for leading journals such as Safety Science and Fire Technology. He was honoured with Massey’s Research Medal (Early Career) and the global SFPE “5 Under 35” award.

Feel free to bring along some of your own work or ideas to show as well.

As always, the meetup will be at 70 Symonds St. The building entrance will be locked, so when you arrive please txt Mairi at 027 446 0164 to get in, or look for the students outside.

We will have pizza and drinks.. Pizza will arrive by 6:45pm, so arrive early.

Thanks
Mark