As the economic recession begins to make its presence felt in the public safety sector some fire departments will have to look at where to tighten their belts. Can the training budget be cut without affecting the safety and effectiveness of firefighters? Jonathan Kaye, founder of Philadelphia virtual training company CommandSim, doesn’t think so – but he believes that simulation training is a cost effective, proven way to enhance command and communication training. Especailly at a time when budgets have been trimmed. And what’s more, it can help US departments with new national guidelines on inter-departmental emergency communications.

Jonathan Kaye is keen to point out first of all that CommandSim Fire is an instructor tool that uses photographs, videos, audio clips, and photo-realistic animations, not a self-running 3D-view computer game. CommandSim Fire uses widely-available – and more importantly, free – Adobe Flash technology to allow responders to participate via the Internet or an intranet, enabling them to remain on duty from their station.  The department’s training officers create scenarios by inserting a series of photographs, video and audio clips and overlaying smoke, fire, and other effects (as well as injects) to create a particular virtual training incident.
This means that the product has longevity because in terms of the number of possible scenarios the only limitation is the imagination of the instructor.

“There are two types of software on the market – software like ours and 3D software. 3D software gives you a more realistic approach where you move around a scene but the downside is that the impression is not as realistic as photographs, and it is more burdensome in terms of technology. The downside with 2D technology is that you cannot move fluidly from one point in space to another. But we are focussing in on performance results for command, strategy, tactics, and communication.  If the perspectives capture the right level of detail, we have seen that the lack of fluidity does not detract from the responder’s perception of realism.  Furthermore, customers tell us that practice in the simulator translates to better performance in the field.”

Kaye is aware that there may be some scepticism about the effectiveness of “virtual” technology in comparison with traditional live tactical exercises. But today there are ten large fire departments in the US and Canada using CommandSim’s multiplayer Edition, as well as two state academies whose students run into the thousands per year, and dozens of municipal and industrial organisations using the standalone tools. “We also have customers elsewhere round the world: South Africa, Austria, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and the UK – all municipal users.”
To assuage fears about the effectiveness of such technology Kaye points at two studies he has conducted. In one, carried out in the fire academy of Philadelphia, four days of exercises were carried out both on a computer and live. “We did live exercises followed by computer exercises, as well as vice versa and live followed by live, and computer by computer. We saw that the students made the same mistakes whether in a live or computer scenario, and that the second time round they corrected their mistakes regardless of whether live or on the computer.”

In a second study, concerns had been raised regarding virtual tests for promotional exams. “People felt that these virtual tests favoured the instructors who were familiar with computer scenario training. As a result, the department created a live exercise for the test in question, and as it turns out the results were nearly identical.”

In the US in particular there has never been a greater need for a cost-effective, unified approach to training because of NIMS. NIMS is the National Incident Management System (NIMS), a guide for all levels of public and private safety sectors. In partnership with the US National Response Framework (NRF), NIMS (amongst other things) calls for a unified approach to interoperability and cross-departmental communications – in other words a single vocabulary for all.
Valuable fire department grants are dependent on US brigades showing that they are adopting NIMS guidelines, points out Kaye. “There is as yet no comprehensive certification however, so the onus is on departments to show that they are complying with the Presidential directive. The beauty of our tool is that at its core it empowers the instructor to deliver whatever he wants, and in the process to show compliance with national standards. Our programme is built to accommodate these guidelines.”

And because CommandSim can be used by other responders too, the fire, police and ambulance can train simultaneously at command level, from different locations (ie via the web), and on the same incident.
“Our programme is essentially an audio-visual aid to visualising what is happening at a scene, while allowing different responders to move around the fireground and interact independently. We have carried out scenarios where lots of different responders mix, such as ARFF. In scenarios like these you are not going to be training someone on how to hold a hose – it is more about decision making.”

3D exercising software may be getting more and more realistic, admits Kaye, but nothing in his opinion is better than a photo or a video clip. “People are interested in practising and perfecting command, strategy, tactics, and communication behaviour.  When it comes to fire, I have not seen an advantage in these skills for 3D programmes. And I am a big fan of 3D because my PhD is in this area. At the end of the day it is about what you are trying to teach.”

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