SERIOUS GAMING
Floods are large-scale, complex events. They are not everyday occurrences. So practice and training are crucially important for crisis managers in all the organisations involved. However, traditional drills are expensive and time-consuming.
The Serious Gaming project is developing and testing a virtual teaching approach that lowers the training threshold and makes it possible to train more often and less expensively. The idea is meant to result in better teamwork between the various parties who go into action during a crisis. Serious gaming also makes organisations better prepared.
Knowledge and skills acquired in 2008 and 2009 will be transformed during 2010 into an actualSerious Game. Initially, this will involve looking at the functional requirements for the 'game'. The next step will be to identify the roles and the players. The exact training goals for the game also need to be examined.
A crucial component comprises the software architecture and the technology required to integrate existing systems and training resources. It will then become clear how the training scenarios can be optimally structured. The end product will be used for a real exercise during the final workshop, in which the complexity of the real crisis management environment will be modelled closely.