A virtual environment for learning aiport emergency management protocols

Abstract

This paper presents a virtual environment designed to enhance the learning of airport emergency management protocols. The learning is performed in an informal manner, with each learner playing a different role in a particular emergency simulation. Learners interact within the virtual environment, managing the available information and following the steps prescribed for each type of emergency in the Airport Emergency Plan of the Spanish Civil Defence Organization. The simulation can be run in different modes of difficulty, and can be used as a learning tool as well as an evaluation tool to measure the accuracy of the learner's actuation within the protocol. It can also support stand-alone training having some of the emergency roles played out by the computer. The virtual environment has been built using DimensioneX, an open source multi-player online game engine. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.