Computer Game Simulates Crisis Scenarios

A new computer-based simulation game that includes a severe-storm recovery scenario is being made available to first responders and emergency personnel throughout the United States to help them train for multi-agency emergency situations.

With the new game, called Incident Commander, up to 16 players can train simultaneously, assuming roles as either the commander or members of the operations team. The game simulates various crisis scenarios--including a natural disaster, a school hostage situation, and a terrorism incident--and can be customized with the addition of new locations, buildings, structures, crisis events, and emergency agencies to more accurately portray local community situations. For the severe storm recovery scenario, for example, users must deal with broken water mains, gas leaks, destroyed buildings, obstructed roads, and injured civilians. Rapid deployment of responder squads is further complicated by downed trees blocking roads.

"I ended up being the logistics officer for the entire facility. It just so happens that I had spent the week before using Incident Commander in depth,” said Joseph Barlow, an Adams County (IL, USA) emergency response team member who was deployed to Baton Rouge (LA, USA) and helped set up an 800-bed hospital for citizens displaced by Hurricane Katrina in August-September 2005. "The lessons learned by playing the simulation fed directly into the practices of setting up an incident command structure and then operating within that structure.”

Incident Commander was developed by BreakAway (Hunt Valley, MD, USA). The U.S. Department of Justice, which funded the development of Incident Commander, will be distributing the simulation to first responders and emergency personnel free of charge.



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