CERMIT: Collaborative Training Technology for Emergency Response Managemen

Paper in proceedings, 2008

Training and simulation in Emergency Response Management (ERM) has drawn increased attention from researchers and practitioners. For one year, van Laere et al. observed and evaluated exercises and real emergency incidents in a Swedish municipality. While their study showed that training and simulation are important in ERM, a good emergency management plan is not enough. “People need to have experience of how to apply that emergency management plan and how to deal with unforeseen issues” [1]. According to ERM experts it is crucial that those actors involved practice together. Hence, training must focus on coordination and communication, probably the weakest link in the event of an emergency. Our work is an initial step towards providing interactive training and operational tools for ERM actors.