Collaboration Patterns in Mixed Reality Environments for a New Emergency Training Center

Abstract

Training actors from public safety agencies (PSA), e.g. emergency medical services, fire departments, police departments involves different technologies and communication and collaboration activities. New technologies promise better support, not only for training, but also for logging relevant information for future analysis and learning. However, choosing the right technologies, defining proper set-ups for the training activities, and identifying premises for long-term use of technical facilities is both difficult and time consuming. Applying earlier lessons from evaluating work in Virtual Environments (VEs) [1], our aim is to develop a better understanding of the impact of new technologies by identifying collaboration patterns influencing training. Collaboration is examined via social, technical, and task related interaction, distinguishable in the different phases of training, from starting an alarm to ending the emergency activities. Our main results illustrate the benefits of (1) building scenarios, and training whole activity chains for certain rescue or other emergency activities, (2) using simulations for better understanding physical places, the task, and (3) distinguishing technical, social and task focused characteristics for factors influencing emergency focused collaboration. Moreover, the results also contribute to understanding the benefits of considering specific simulation technologies when training for emergency and rescue activities.