Education and training in virtual environments for disaster management

Virtual Environments (VE) are currently being developed and evaluated as an alternative for educating and training first responder personnel. The methods being developed offer a more realistic alternative to lectures, manuals, and traditional computer-based training and circumvent the logistic and resource requirements of a full-scale field exercise. This presentation will discuss how lessons learned in the application of VR in education, carried out within the University of Queensland will assist to inform a developmental project training first responders to disaster scenes. This large-scale project, just getting underway at the University of Missouri-Rolla's Virtual and Rapid Prototyping Laboratory and sponsored by the United States Army's Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) combining VR and DM will be discussed. The presentation will reflect on and discuss the current and near-future possibilities for applying VR to education and training in the DM field