Creating a virtual reality training platform for rescue leaders

In today's education for the Swedish rescue leaders exercises that uses photos from previous rescue missions are often used. These photos are being presented to the students and they are supposed to come up with a plan of actions based on the situation at the scene of the photos. This study investigates if their basis for decision making is improved if this exercise is replaced with a similar exercise in virtual reality where the users can move around the scene. In order to investigate this a virtual reality environment with a scene with a burning building was implemented. Experienced rescue leaders were asked to use the VR environment and deliver reports containing the decisions and observations that were made. The results were compared to the results of another group of experienced rescue leaders doing the normal photo exercise. The results from the two individual groups was judged and commented on by an expert panel consisting of very experienced rescue leaders. The results indicated that there was some added depth in the basis of the decision making of the group doing the VR exercise. The results show that the participants doing the VR exercise may have been more mentally immersed in thesituation thus acting their role of a rescue leader more naturally. They may therefore arrive to more well reasoned decisions and thus learning more from the experience compared to the other group. This finding is strengthened by the fact that the group doing the VR exercise delivered more natural reports and did not forget external factors to the same extent as the other group did. This study recommends that some photo-exercises during the education are replaced with VR exercises. The VR exercise offers a more genuine experience where the participant is more likely to be immersed in the rescue leader role and therefore learn from the event compared tothe picture exercises