Case Study: Interactive Emergency Training for NYC

By Jenelle Boucher

In 2007, City University of New York’s School of Professional Studies and New York’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) and Department of Homeless Services (DHS) worked with Kognito to create a training course for the New York City employees who would manage the city’s hurricane sheltering system in the event of a hurricane or major coastal storm. The course simulated an actual hurricane event, placing learners into roles they may one day be asked to assume and challenging them with common problems that are likely to arise.

The objective

OEM made significant updates to the city’s hurricane sheltering system in 2006. While people do not often associate New York City with hurricanes, the threat to the city is real. Because of New York’s geography and population density, even a small storm could cause significant flooding and require the evacuation of millions of residents. In a major storm, up to 25 percent of the city’s residents would need to evacuate and an estimated 600,000 people would enter the city’s hurricane sheltering system. This massive undertaking would require the mobilization of roughly 30,000 city managers, who would be needed to operate and supervise the sheltering system.

Rather than relying solely on just-in-time training, OEM decided to have annual training for city workers to educate them about the sheltering system and encourage them to report for duty if called. To efficiently reach such a large number of city employees and reduce the administrative burden and cost of arranging face-to-face training, OEM chose to develop a 90-minute online course, which workers could access at their convenience through an LMS that would track their progress and completion.

The challenges

There were a number of challenges in designing the Hurricane System Orientation course. First, learners were skeptical about the need for this training. Since the last major hurricane to hit the city was in 1938, many of our learners had the misconception that New York was not vulnerable to these storms. Second, many learners admitted that they would prefer to remain with their families in the event of a storm, instead of volunteering their time to work in a hurricane shelter. These two challenges meant that the course needed to help learners understand the seriousness of the hurricane threat, while simultaneously assuring them that their families and friends would be safe during an evacuation.

Another challenge was providing learners with actual practice in the roles they would be asked to assume in the sheltering system. We knew that, if the learners could practice their roles, they would develop more realistic expectations and be more likely to remember the lessons from the training in an actual event. However, we had to complete the course prior to the start of hurricane season, which meant we had only two and a half months to plan and execute the entire project.

The solution

The Hurricane System Orientation course was designed around a storyline in which a fictional hurricane approaches and hits New York City, providing learners with an abbreviated virtual experience of the actual event. The storyline was broken into six “days” that describe the approach, landfall, and aftermath of the fictional hurricane.  Each “day” of the course contains a television news story, with an anchor and meteorologist (played by TV news personalities Dana Tyler and Dave Price) giving updates on the storm and interview various city officials and residents to understand the significance of the events. Each news clip was followed by a narrated account of what the learner would be doing during that particular day of the evacuation. Simulations and interactive activities throughout the course enabled learners to practice their roles in a risk-free environment, dealing with virtual evacuees, managing different areas of a shelter, and handling common problems that are likely to arise.

Because of the challenges, it was expected that most learners would not be receptive to the message until they understood why hurricane sheltering is important for New York and how an evacuation would effect their families and friends.  Therefore, Day 1 and Day 2 were designed to revolve around these messages. In Day 1, weatherman Dave Price described the approach of the hurricane, discussed how past storms have effected the city, and explained why New York is especially susceptible to storm-surge flooding. Afterward, learners had access OEM’s interactive flood-zone map, looking up their address or the addresses of loved ones to see who lives within an evacuation zone. 

In Day 2, news anchor Dana Tyler interviewed a sheltering system staff member to learn more about her role. They addressed the staff member’s desire to be with her family during the storm and concluded that the family would be safe, staying further inland with other relatives during the storm.  After this news clip, learners were told how to prepare their families for emergencies and are encouraged to decide in advance where their families would stay if they need to evacuate. By anticipating these two issues and addressing them early in the course, we were able to ease the learners’ hesitations before they interfered with actual learning.

To provide practice for the learners, the course simulated an evacuation center and hurricane shelter (two types of sheltering-system facilities) where learners could observe in action and interact with to solve problems. For example, in Day 4, learners had a birds-eye-view of an evacuation center in action.  They watched evacuees arrive through the entrance, visit one or more of the stations in the center, and finally reach the buses at the other end. Learners saw that some of the evacuees are in wheelchairs, some have brought their pets with them, some are waiting to be reunited with family members, and so forth. 

As lines form around some of the stations, evacuees turn red, meaning that their progress through the center has been impeded by preventable issues. The learners must resolve these issues to facilitate a more steady flow of evacuees through the center. To resolve these issues, learners had to interact with evacuees and staff to better understand the problems and find solutions. Many of the problems required that learners think quickly on their feet and come up with common sense solutions, such as determining when additional staff is needed, how to communicate with evacuees who do not speak English, and how to manage emotions when evacuees become upset. 

By structuring the course as a virtual, interactive experience, we were able to increase the learners’ engagement levels and give them a better understanding of what an actual evacuation would be like. This helped them realize the importance of the training, while gaining valuable practice that would not otherwise be possible.

Finally, to address the time constraints for production, we broke our team into two groups. One group worked on media production and another focused on development of the two simulations. The streamlined production process further enabled us to mobilize quickly, involving the client at necessary junctures so that we could work closely with them and minimize changes at the end of the project. In addition, the client was very understanding about the tight deadline and helped speed production by reviewing deliverables and gathering focus groups very quickly. All of this allowed us to meet the deadline, completing the course before the 2007 hurricane season.

The result

The course was launched in spring of 2007. As of November of that year, over 30,000 city employees had taken the course, and 6,500 also completed the course’s online feedback form. Of those leaving feedback, 96 percent said they better understood the roles they could be asked to assume and roughly 90 percent said they felt more confident about participating in the sheltering system. Some responded that they had volunteered during Hurricane Katrina or had gone through real-life sheltering simulations and that this course reminded them of those experiences. Many also reported pride in having the opportunity to one day help their fellow New Yorkers.

Furthermore, this project helped our clients realize the true potential of online training. Because simulations provide learners with practice that is not possible in real life or in a classroom, they are very powerful tools for emergency training. In fact, OEM was so pleased with the outcome of the course, that they made it mandatory training for all levels of sheltering system staff, establishing it as a pivotal part of New York City’s hurricane training program.

For a demo of this course, visit www.kognito.com/demos/hurricane.