VRFIS: An Immersive Framework for Real-Time Flood Monitoring, Visualization, and Interactive Environmental Analysis

The rapid evolution of Mixed Reality (MR) technologies, particularly Virtual Reality (VR), offers powerful new means of visualizing and interacting with geographic and environmental data. This paper presents Virtual Reality Flood Information System (VRFIS), an immersive information platform developed using Unreal Engine 5 and Google Photo Realistic 3D Tiles to enable real-time exploration of high-resolution geospatial datasets across the United States. VRFIS integrates photorealistic terrain rendering, dynamic environmental simulation, and multimodal interaction within a fully immersive 3D environment, allowing users to visualize, query, and interpret complex environmental phenomena with unprecedented realism and spatial context. By coupling high-fidelity visualization with live data streams from authoritative sources such as USGS and NOAA, the system delivers an intuitive decision-support and educational tool for environmental science, hydrology, urban planning, and geography education. The results demonstrate how next-generation virtual reality environments, exemplified by VRFIS, can enhance spatial awareness, promote experiential learning, and improve data-driven decision-making in environmental and geospatial domains.