Use of a collaborative virtual reality simulation for multi-professional training in emergency management communications

Abstract

Challenges of disaster and emergency situations require communication across professions and therefore that students in emergency management (EM) professions are well trained. Common training relying on lectures and desktop exercises have limitations. Live training exercises are expensive to model, risky, inflexible to adapt and difficult to replicate. These approaches often focus on mono-professional teams, and can omit crucial communications or collaboration protocols from training. New education methodologies that apply virtual reality (VR) simulations offer opportunities to support immersive training for EM multi-professional co-located teams of medics, firefighters, police, and industry at the incident site. This paper presents results of a project that has developed a model for multiprofessional EM education using VR simulations. We present a VR prototype design that applies decision models Naturalistic Decision Making/Recognition Primed Decision forming the basis of the pedagogical model for multi-professional EM training. We discuss results of the trials and identify opportunities and challenges. Keywords: virtual reality, game-based learning, emergency management, immersive learning, communication, collaboration