A virtual collaborative simulation-based training system

Abstract

Emergencies can occur at any location and time, so all stakeholders should get themselves prepared for providing emergency actions and responses. Such actions are especially important in sophisticated but vulnerable systems, e.g., mass transport systems, hospitals and power plants. Crichton and Flin [1] showed multiple examples that the performance of incident management teams in the initial stage of a crisis could affect the development of the incident. Therefore, regular training should be provided to the stakeholders, particularly the operators of the organisation, so that they can work together to deal with the emergencies effectively. Although conducting a drill in the real system may be the most direct way for stakeholders to practice their emergency response abilities, performing a drill usually requires many resources and a disruption of the real system. Therefore, this paper introduces an approach to conduct the drill in a virtual environment. It proposes a virtual collaborative simulation-based training system with an aim to improve the emergency management ability of the staff in sophisticated but vulnerable systems. There are four major advantages of the proposed system: 1). It is off-line from the real system so that there is no space or time constraint to carry out the training. 2). It requires fewer physical resources to carry out the training, which makes the training much cost-effective. 3.) The managers, as well as the operators, can have a better understanding of the real operations by looking at the 3D simulation model. 4.) It provides flexibility to train the operators in various hypothetical scenarios, including some rarely occurred ones. To better illustrate the ideas, this paper takes the mass transport system as an example. However, it should be stressed that the proposed system can be applied to other areas like exhibition centres, emergency rooms of the hospitals and nuclear plants.