Four ways virtual reality can help communities heal after disasters

When natural disasters strike, they shatter lives, disrupt routines and loosen the emotional ties people have with the places they call home. For the Italian towns of Amatrice and Accumoli, devastated by a 6.2 earthquake in 2016, the damage extended far beyond bricks and mortar. Streets vanished. Landmarks were reduced to rubble. The past seemed to disappear while the future became very uncertain.

But what if technology could offer a way to reconnect with what was lost and reflect on the future of the place?

Recent research my colleagues and I conducted explores how virtual reality (VR) can help communities recover emotionally, socially and culturally after a disaster.

Working with members of the communities affected, we created immersive digital environments of their towns as they existed before the earthquake. The results revealed how VR can support healing in ways no blueprint or rebuild ever could.

Here are four ways virtual reality might help communities heal after catastrophic events strike.

1. It offers a space to grieve and remember

For many participants, the VR reconstructions were emotionally powerful experiences – one even described them as “cemeteries of place”. Stepping into a virtual version of their hometown allowed them to reconnect with deeply personal memories: the sound of a church bell, the feel of sitting on a bench while having a gelato, the view from a childhood window.

Grief in post-disaster settings isn’t just about lost lives – it’s also about the erasure of everyday spaces where people worked, gathered, played, laughed and simply lived. One resident of Amatrice told us she didn’t have the courage to drive through the town any more because the destruction was too painful to witness.

In VR, however, she was able to revisit the square where she used to sit with her family and eat ice cream. For some, this triggered sadness, but also joy, a sense of lightness – and a sense of reconnection.

2. It helps people reclaim a lost ‘sense of place’

Disasters often leave communities displaced, physically and emotionally. Familiar surroundings become unrecognisable. For residents of Amatrice and Accumoli, whose historic centres are still inaccessible or remain destroyed after nine years, daily routines and social interactions have been disrupted and must be reconstituted.

By recreating these spaces in VR, we saw how people could begin to reclaim their sense of place. The reconstructions included not just major landmarks, but also small, meaningful details, such as plastic chairs outside cafes, flowerpots on balconies, even the chatter of people in a square on a summer evening. These touches matter. They help make the virtual towns feel alive, bringing back the heritage of the everyday of these communities.

One participant said that being in the VR environment felt like “going to the living room” again, a phrase some locals once used for their evening strolls in the town square.

3. It supports intergenerational memory-sharing

Many of the younger participants in our project were children, or not yet born, when the earthquake struck. Their memories of the towns are fragmented or absent. VR gave them a way to see and understand what their parents and grandparents remember, through their eyes, to ask questions, point to places, and listen to stories.

In practice, the experience became a shared one. While one person wore the VR headset, others gathered around a laptop to observe, comment and remember. One teenager asked her mother to help find the window of her old bedroom. Another participant’s son, born two years after the earthquake, “saw” pre-quake Amatrice for the first time through VR and through his father’s narration.

These moments turned the technology into a tool for storytelling, for keeping cultural memory alive between generations.

4. It creates inclusive, community-led recovery tools

Much disaster recovery is led by top-down planning (meaning, engineers, architects and bureaucrats making decisions about what to rebuild and how). But VR offers an opportunity to include community voices from the start.

Our project used a “techno-ethnographic” approach, where residents didn’t just observe but shaped the reconstructions. We asked: what should we include? What matters to you? They pointed out favourite cafes, benches, trees and missing features. They even debated how many clocks were on the civic tower, as they could not remember.

This collaborative process gave residents a sense of agency over how their towns and their memories were represented. It also reminded us that authenticity isn’t about perfect realism. It’s about emotional truth: the way a place feels, not just how it looks.

Technology and emotional healing

Virtual reality can’t replace what’s been lost. It can’t rebuild trust, revive livelihoods or resolve trauma. But our research shows it can offer emotional healing: a space where people can mourn, reflect, reconnect and share.

It also shows that technology must be handled with care. In early versions of our VR environments, we found that some participants became distressed or disoriented, especially when scenes depicted post-earthquake ruins of the town in nighttime settings. This taught us the importance of trauma-sensitive design: allowing users to adjust lighting, control their experience, or even just step away when needed.

Ultimately, VR is not a fix but it can be a powerful complement to the long, human work of rebuilding after disaster. When designed with communities, for communities, it can help restore more than heritage. It can help restore belonging.