Virtual Threat, Real Sweat
By Jenni Jarventaus
Computer-based simulations, games, and online assessment tools gain ground in emergency personnel training.
Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, fires, hazardous material spills, terrorist attacks, and pandemics—rarely have doomsday prophets had such an abundance of disaster scenarios to choose from as they do in a precarious post-9/11 and post-Katrina era. Following the two calamities, preparedness for, response to, and recovery from major emergencies have become national priorities in the United States, as both the public and private sectors look for ways to train their employees and the general public to handle the unexpected.
A significant step to integrate the multitude of federal, state, regional, and local emergency training initiatives was taken in 2004, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) introduced the National Incident Management System-Incident Command System (NIMS-ICS), a nationwide doctrine for emergency management, which includes common terms and concepts for all levels of emergency responders. Since its introduction, NIMS-ICS has served as a template to streamline the design and execution of emergency management and response training, thus helping training developers operate in the same language and build standardized, as opposed to "boutique," training solutions.
While traditional training methods— such as drills, field exercises, and classroom sessions—continue to be an indispensable part of those solutions, the major push now is toward developing new learning and assessment technologies, and incorporating them into the training mix. Online assessment databases, modeling and simulation technologies, and computer games are rapidly becoming more sophisticated and customizable, offering a cost-effective way to train emergency personnel, to gauge their competencies, and to deploy responders with appropriate skills to the incident site swiftly and effectively.
Unnervingly realistic
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Customized Programs Are
Becoming the Norm
A growing number of security and emergency management companies are designing customized response and recovery plans for corporations and not-for-profits that seek to guarantee their resilience in the event of an emergency. The increased demand for tight security has boosted the industry, as has the government agencies’ response—or rather, lack thereof—to major disasters in recent years.
Especially during and after Hurricane Katrina, companies learned that in the event of a major incident, they should not expect the government to come riding in as the knight in shining armor.
"I think that message, which came through repeatedly even from President Bush himself, made it very clear to everyone that it’s really our responsibility to make sure that we, as individuals or organizations, are prepared," says Victor Anderes, vice president of New York state-based Global Emergency Management.
The demand for outsourced emergency training often stems from the sheer number of preparedness and response actions that need to be implemented in the organization. Many companies find the effort overwhelming.
Typically the process starts with drawing up a vulnerability assessment, which explores the organization’s collective Achilles heels in the event of an incident. Those weaknesses are then addressed in an emergency plan, which focuses on three priorities: saving the lives of employees and customers, protecting the assets of the company, and determining whether the company will be able to carry on its business activities during an emergency.
Training is a crucial component of the plan. It typically includes basic awareness training and legal training on the obligations of the organization to provide crisis communication and leadership training.
An exercise scenario might present a terrorist attack at or close to the company’s headquarters, where there may be as many as 5,000 people in danger. The mission is to establish how the company will respond, who will do what, and when.
"A lot of companies will say that their crisis manager or emergency planning manager will handle these things. This is absolutely incorrect," Anderes says. "Everyone in the organization is going to be affected, and every single person becomes an emergency responder. The more people are trained to respond, the more successful the organization’s response is going to be."
An aspect that is often lacking from preparedness plans is the organization’s presence abroad. Although many companies have employees, offices, affiliates, or manufacturing plants abroad, they tend to focus mostly on the security at the headquarters level without realizing that the biggest exposure may be 6,000 miles away. According to Anderes, while an incident overseas may not get the coverage of a U.S.-based incident, it may have serious consequences from a business continuity point. "The key to effective emergency planning is to treat it as a continuous cycle. Many organizations invest money in the plans and training, and end it there," he says. "Every emergency plan is a living, breathing document that needs to be reviewed constantly."
"People are just now getting their heads around using games for training. |
Even though virtual simulations are not a new phenomenon in training, computer-based simulation and gaming technology has moved into the mainstream of emergency response training in the past few years.
The change has been swift: Whereas a few years ago staff in many local emergency response agencies didn’t even have personal computers, now the necessary computer technology is becoming more accessible, and virtual training is gaining approval as a younger, more computer-savvy generation is entering the emergency responder workforce.
The differences between the modern, high-fidelity computer simulations and the more multimedia-based simulations of yore are substantial. Orlando-based Environmental Tectonics Corporation’s Advanced Disaster Management Simulator, for example, uses real-time interactivity and dynamic physics elements that make the disaster scenarios seem unnervingly realistic.
In one particularly unsettling ADMS simulation scenario, a passenger airplane carrying more than 100 people crashes onto an airport runway and the body of the craft breaks into two parts. Fires break out, there’s a massive fuel spill, and the site is scattered with scores of wounded and dead.
The trainees—law enforcement and airport officials, firefighters, emergency medical services, and rescue personnel—stand in voting booth sized partitioned spaces, responding to the sights and sounds via a joystick and radio. Their mission is to organize the first responders to search and evacuate survivors; suppress the fire; start field triage; and address the media, the FBI, and the Joint Terrorism Task Force. The system, which is currently used in several regional-level counter terrorism training centers, fire brigades, airports, and national-level training organizations in the United States and abroad, evaluates the participants according to the "four Cs" of emergency management: command, control, coordination, and communication.
Considering the manpower, costs, and time involved in orchestrating a live drill of similar magnitude, the benefits of computer-based virtual simulations are obvious. Not only are virtual simulations more cost-effective than live training drills, but they also can be delivered on site, with little danger of trainees getting hurt and no wear and tear to vehicles and equipment.
Most current simulation systems can conjure up a multitude of emergency scenarios, including real-world glitches such as vehicle malfunctions and dramatic weather changes. They also can create criteria for student performance evaluation and allow the trainees to try out different responder roles that they may face in a disaster situation—a benefit that face-to-face exercises typically cannot offer.
For example, if an act of bioterrorism were to happen in Chicago, 55 dispensing centers would be required to deliver drugs to three million people within 48 hours, which constitutes the maximum exposure time before mass deaths start to occur. Even massive live drills cannot train more than a small percentage of all of the people—public health workers, other city workers, and volunteers—required to respond to such a large-scale disaster, says Colleen Monahan, director of the Center for the Advancement of Distance Education at the University of Illinois’s Chicago School of Public Health.
"With a simulation, it’s possible to get 100 percent of the responders to go through the training. They also can try out all of the different roles, which is important since most people have to act in various positions in the event of an emergency." With funding from the Chicago Department of Public Health, the Center for the Advancement of Distance Education has developed Zero Hour, a computer-based video game simulation that trains public health officials and other emergency responders in how to effectively run a mass drug dispensing center following an anthrax attack. The game, which was piloted in Minnesota and Indiana and will soon be rolled out in Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, and New York, tracks how public health workers respond to various situations in triage and medical examination, how quickly patients are being evaluated and treated, and whether the user is effectively handling supplies and is following department communication protocols.
Until now, Zero Hour has been designed for various local and state public health agencies, but CADE plans to make the game available to the general public this fall, Monahan says.
Supplemental training
While computer-based simulations hold great potential in emergency response training, many companies that offer customized and complete emergency preparedness solutions use the technology first and foremost as a way to supplement a wider training tool set.
MYMIC, a Virginia-based training solutions company, targets local emergency managers and organizations with its Emergency Management Disaster Preparedness Program, of which traditional tabletop exercises and field drills constitute a major part.
According to MYMIC’s emergency operations analyst, Tony Lee, the traditional, field-based, hands-on methods are necessary for training first responders, police, firefighters, and emergency medical service personnel whose jobs often entail taxing physical tasks.
"It’s hard to compete with the actual feel and sensation of being in a closed space with flames around you, lugging a 100-pound hose or carrying victims down a ladder," says Lee, who has had firefighter training. "Although simulations are improving every year, when it comes to the stress, fear, anxiety, and sensory overload of a live environment, they are not quite there yet."
Echoing similar sentiments, most simulation and game developers readily admit that their products are not a panacea that will make all traditional training methods obsolete. Rather, simulations are a way to complement other more traditional training methods.
They are not a replacement for live training, which is still useful, especially in training upper-level emergency management officials. "For example, I’m not going to see [Chicago’s] Mayor [Richard M.] Daley sit down in his office to take online courses or play games," Monahan notes. "The upper-level people will still need top-echelon drills to practice emergency management. It’s the lower-level people who gain the most from these new technologies."
Online training
Computer simulations and games are not the only techie-friendly training tools that are reshaping emergency responder training. GeoLearning, a West Des Moines–based learning platform developer, is currently delivering first responder training to approximately 170,000 police, fire, and emergency personnel in New Jersey as part of the state’s homeland security initiative.
The technology backbone of the program is the GeoMaestro learning management system, an online training platform that manages student training records, identifies training deficiencies, and certifies training compliance and readiness among New Jersey’s municipalities and counties.
The state police, fire department, and medical services use the LMS to deliver training in conjunction with their academies throughout the state. The project, according to Dennis Smith, GeoLearning’s project manager in New Jersey, aims to build one central repository for first responders in the state, so that in the event of an incident, an administrator can log into the LMS to search for all the individuals within a certain range or a select area who are certified to handle the incident.
"The goal is to be able to look at all the first responders and see, for example, which people within a five-mile radius of a fire, motor vehicle accident, building collapse, plane crash, or an explosion inside a tunnel, are certified to handle it," Smith says.
The LMS also directs the responders to the necessary training and can produce worst-case scenarios, whereby the senior officials can test whether the state has the people and the expertise to handle disasters of various type and size. Having information available electronically in a real-time database helps participants address changes faster, according to Will Hipwell, senior vice president of marketing and product management at GeoLearning.
"For example, if you need to bring people up to speed on certain developments, you can disburse information quickly, create material, put it online, test people, and track and assess their learning activities," Hipwell says.
In terms of automating the assessment process, New Jersey is way ahead of the curve. Most states operate separate responder databases, although many are developing similar central repositories to comply with the federal government’s NIMS requirements.
Time-consuming development
According to the most visionary simulation and game developers, virtual technology still has a long way to go before it reaches its full potential. Developing simulation games is still slow and costly, and it demands extensive amounts of specialized input. The time-to-market is long, and changes to existing configurations are hard, or at times impossible, to make.
In emergency preparedness and response training against terrorism attacks, in particular, the simulation tools haven’t traditionally been able to address the changes fast enough. Constantly updating the games and simulations with brand new threats, such as liquid explosives or shoe bombs, has proven to be too costly and time consuming.
BreakAway, a Maryland-based software company, is tackling these problems with a set of new game technology tools called MOSBE. The tool set, which is operated via a software interface, allows the end user or subject matter expert to build an exact replica of her community, to customize the disaster scenario according to the community’s specific threats, and to build real world variables into the game. What we’re doing is actually turning this technology over to them so that they can create their own ideas, build a simulated world according to their environment, and say ‘What if terrorists did this?,’" says Josh Johns, marketing director at BreakAway.
The technology will shorten the cycle of production, which allows users to update their protocols and adjust their strategies to understand what is going to happen in case of an emergency and how they might respond to it.
The MOSBE tool set is currently used by the military, but the next version will be built for the first responder and homeland security market. Johns believes there is considerable demand to take the technology to the next level, which would mean turning the games into highly integrated training, teaching, and instructional tools.
"The current tools may help people pass their certification and be familiar with protocols, but you can’t use them to certify anybody. I think the next thing people want to see is a really effective instructor component, so the game will actually serve as a validation and certification tool."
Although simulation and gaming technology still faces a fair amount of skepticism in the grassroots level of the first responder community, the simulation developers are finding more buy-in from the field, especially following the military’s acceptance of the tools. In a study last year concerning the use of simulations in the military, only 10 percent of respondents said simulations were a waste of time and money, according to Phil Jones, training solutions manager at MYMIC.
"We were surprised to get that little pushback because every time you go into an organization and say ‘I’m going to take away dollars from your live training and spend it on these virtual things,’ you get a lot of resistance," Jones says.
"Probably this will happen with the first responder community when they learn the strengths and weaknesses of virtual simulations and learn how to integrate them into their training programs."
In Chicago, the Center for the Advancement of Distance Education also has cooperated with the local fire department to try out a mobile technology tool for training. Last year CADE developed a system for streaming video of fires to cell phones and the Internet, allowing the fire commissioner and emergency officers to see the fires and plan an adequate response without having to wait for TV crews to show up on the scene.
The value of the video stream is similar to that of games: They allow the responders to learn more of the different scenarios so that before they run into the fire, they have already thought of their actions, Monahan says.
"The next question is to determine what to do with all the information we get from gaming and simulation training. We are collecting all this data and putting it into learning management systems, but ultimately we haven’t really figured out what emergency personnel are expected to do, and which of their actions are most important."
According to Monahan, there needs to be much more funding for research to determine the true effectiveness of the various training approaches. To make better use of scarce training resources, training developers also must further customize their solutions according to the communities and their needs.
"The fact is that the disaster responders have full-time jobs; they’re out patrolling or responding to fires, and they don’t have the time and resources required to train for response and recovery-based actions," Jones says. "We have to better understand these specific challenges and say ‘How can we translate the different skills, methods, and processes into things that can truly support the local emergency management?’"
Dividing the limited resources effectively also calls for training local emergency managers on what are the most dangerous and most likely threats that they will face and how to best prepare for both. According to Jones, whereas a weapon of mass destruction is the most hazardous scenario because it would cause the most amount of damage in the least amount of time, the most likely threats on the local level are traditional natural disasters: hurricanes, earthquakes, and fires.
"As we’ve learned with Katrina, we can’t take our eye off the ball with the most likely ones while we plan, prepare, and train for the most dangerous ones," Jones says.
Jenni Jarventaus is an associate editor for T+D; jjarventaus@astd.org.
Published: May 2007, T+D magazine