Professor Luis Ceferino and his team want to better understand people’s behavior during an earthquake so that we can improve earthquake safety protocol. For this study, they attempted to create a realistic and immersive earthquake experience for test subjects. This involved synchronizing the motion of the Shake House, an earthquake simulator at the California Academy of Sciences, with a virtual reality environment they developed. So when test subjects saw things falling in virtual reality, the physics corresponded to the shaking they felt. “For earthquake engineers, this gives us a new way to go beyond computational models and study how people perceive risk and make decisions as earthquakes unfold,” said civil engineering professor Luis Ceferino. “Getting answers would give us more information to develop policy, recommendations and guidance for what to do when there is an earthquake to further reduce people’s risk of injury.”
Read more: https://engineering.berkeley.edu/news/2026/09/understanding-earthquake-risk-perception/