C3Rescue

C3Rescue simulation system that provides an environment that allows training and controlled studies of collaborative decision making in a dynamic environment with an emergency response task. In C3Rescue players can perform emergency response tasks at command level and perform team tasks as co-operation and coordination of actions and plans. The training manager or researchers can select resources and some important characteristics from the real world and created a well-controlled simulation that creates the wanted decision and team work situation for the players in the simulation. The system generates a task environment that have the wanted resources and geography, and it will generate a complex, dynamic and opaque characteristics, similar to the cognitive tasks that people normally encounter in real-life systems.

Training

C3Rescue can be used to train team decision making. It generates a task environment in which a group of people co-operate to perform an emergency response task at command and control level. The simulation includes emergency stations with there resources and personnel in a selected area. The players who run the system are part of a emergency response organisation and can take on the roles as staff members or unit chiefs in the field.

Training Goals

Typical learning goals in C3Rescue are to understand how to perform distributed planning, coordinated actions, communication and tactical reasoning, all based on real amount of resources and a real geographic environment.

The trainee can experience problems with the decision process in the organisation; understand the limits of the resources, the time to perform movements, how to exchange information with other persons, to understand the others persons needs and goals, and to understand the importance of shared frameworks and shared goals.

Possible training goals when training tactical reasoning is to train the staff in resource allocation, planning possible event in terms of needed resources etc.

Simulated organisation and tasks

The C3Rescue system have configuration features that make it possible to change the size of the simulated organisation. The selected geography area is imported as Open Street Map data and can freely be downloaded from the open street map site (www.openstreetmap.org) The open street map contain information about, road, houses and the vegetation in the selected area. The road information have information as road type and speed etc.

The main type of resources in the simulation are Stations, Vehicles and Personnel. The station can be freely inserted at wanted locations in the geographic area. The system simulate the vehicles and have vehicle properties as; type, possible task it can perform, maximum number of personal that can be in the vehicle, assignment, current location, speed etc. The system simulate the personnel and have personnel properties as; competence, possible task the person can perform, current assignment, current location etc.

The only task the system simulates is the movement task, at it is based on vehicle type and the road data. How long time a emergency response task take and the different sub task needs to be controlled by the training Manager. Example house fire, The training manager needs to define the house fire and prepare descriptions and resource demands before the session. The player that plays the personnel at the field should get the description from the training manager when they arrive to the scene. The training manager should decide how the fire fighting task goes depending on the resources and the timing of performing the sub tasks.

Research

C3Rescue can be used in Team work research and emergency response decision making research. It generates a task environment in which a group of people co-operate to perform an emergency response task at command and control level. It creates a more complex environment that the C3Fire environment, and can be used to study resource management, planning and usage off different decision support tools.

The goal whit the system is to make the environment generate a good environment for study of a team collaboration tasks.

Monitoring and Analysis

To be able to analyse the collaborative work in the C3Rescue system, computer based monitoring are used. The monitoring is integrated in the simulation and all the information tools used by the students. During a session the C3Rescue system creates a log with all events in the simulation and all computer mediated activities, such as communication and individual work.

C3Rescue's analysis modules makes it possible to perform quantitative analysis of the performed actions. The quantitative analysis can be performed on all the information received from the computer based monitoring.