Project

Overview

Creation of a crisis management simulation game to provide training to organisations for their staff to experience and in preparation for crisis management in an interactive and positive way. The simulation game would be primarily utilised for educational purposes and whilst targeted at organisations, it may provide learning opportunities for personal use. The target organisations would be operational companies of locations of mass gatherings, such as shopping centres, or corporate offices. Given organisation and government procedures can vary by organisation and company, the material within the simulation will focus on Australian government legislation specific to crisis management procedures. The simulation game is intended to be a collection of short mini-simulations with objectives that direct the end user to follow government advice on how to respond to an emergency and deliver an outcome that averts, avoids or manages the organisation’s initial response to the crisis situation.

Motivation

As a security technology professional, there is limited availability of any such simulation platform with e-learning capabilities. Organisations typically run crisis management workshops annually or as per minimum legislative requirements. Other training such as fire warden training, first aid training or conflict resolution follows a similar pattern and may only occur annually. Often with large gaps between training sessions, employees may feel less confident in responding to an emergency or crisis event. In person training within organisations often focuses on lecture style presentations to large groups of staff with powerpoints where it can be daunting for employees to ask questions or learn in an impactful way. The creation of an interactive crisis management simulation game provides the option for employees to access material at any time and take in key learnings, and ensure operational confidence in employee response.

Description

The game is intended to be developed for training purposes for PC, Mac and iOS(iPad). As the game may contain media distressing to individuals, any loading of the game will come with a disclaimer where the end user must click agree to continue. Upon loading, all users are required to either create an account or sign in via single sign on (SSO). This assists with records management for any organisation that wishes to track users records of play in the game for organisational training requirements and/or to support any legislative training requirements for the individual’s role. On setup of individual profile, the user can select training topics they are interested in completing. If an organisation wishes, they can preset and lock training requirements for employees. After the initial account creation, a user can then view and select the crisis management simulation that interests them or required by the organisation.

Some examples of simulations which will be available:
Armed Offender: First person view in an office environment, alert tones sound indicating a lockdown with shots heard in the background. A colleague in the game frantically screams that there’s a shooter in the building. The simulation then allows the user to move around the office, prompts are displayed guiding the user steps to take and likely areas to go to avoid danger. The simulation will present training to follow the Australian government’s advice ‘Escape, Hide, Tell’ for such a situation.
Evacuation: First person view in an office environment, evacuation tones sound indicating an evacuation is required. The user is a floor warden. The simulation provides the user prompts to talk to co-workers along the way, simple guidance around leaving belongings behind, directing to the most practical exit and preventing re-entry as required is demonstrated.
Fire Panel: As fire indicator panels (FIP) and emergency warden intercom systems (EWIS) can be daunting to operate, the simulation provides a first person experience to interact with buttons virtually to see the outcome after each press.
Some other examples of simulations within the game are but not limited to bomb threats, fire fighting and first aid / CPR.
These in game simulations will not be designed to replace emergency responders. The simulation training will provide critical steps for those in organisations to manage the initial response to a crisis prior to the arrival of emergency responders.

On completion of any one of the simulations, the progress and actions taken by the user are saved as a record within the users profile. A user can repeat the simulation at any point. Feedback is provide on the users actions taken at the conclusion of the simulation training and key steps are provided to remind the user of the requirements of the scenario.

Early versions of the game provide generic scenarios based on government requirements however future versions may offer customised requirements per organisation. This could include a customised office environment within the simulation, logos and specific organisational policies integrated. Further, if specific learning is required by the organisation, custom multiple choice forms can be provided at the conclusion of the simulation for completion to provide e-learning records.

Tools and Technlogies

Software that allows cross platform game development will be required. Unity is software with this capability renowned for its simple introduction to game development with opportunity to produce low code solutions via a graphics user interface (GUI). Most of the game is expect to built within Unity alone however more complex modelling in game may require the use of Blender. A personal gaming desktop computer with reasonable specs will be sufficient for development of the game. During testing phases other devices may be needed to test the game.

Skills Required

Experience in Unity development. Unity provides several courses and guided pathways free of charge to learn how to use the platform and master intermediate skills. If Blender is used for more complex modelling then similar learning opportunities exist. Learning the required skills for these two main platforms is expected to take 3-6 months depending on resource and time commitment assigned to the game.

Coding in Unity will be required and whilst the Unity courses will cover basic elements of this, some learning around C# may be advantageous.

Outcome

With the successful roll out of the project, the gap in the market for a readily accessible crisis management training package will be addressed. The creation of the crisis management simulation game in line with government advice will ensure organisational confidence and employee readiness in the event of an emergency or crisis as supported by the training simulations. This will include increased likelihood of better responses by operational employees to crises as they occur in places of mass gathering or other as applicable. This leads to better application of Australian government emergency and crisis management policies, increased confidence of individuals in attending places of mass gatherings or other, and efficiency of organisations and their employees in crisis response.