Two decades ago, writers for the television show Star Trek: The Next Generation created rooms where the characters could interact with holographic scenarios. Some characters used them to train for combat; others used them to solve tricky repair problems to the ship.

Unfortunately, members of the fire service cannot sort out their training problems on a holodeck, at least not yet. However, there are a growing variety of simulation tools for things such as driver training and fireground command. There also are advances in simulation technology for training command-level responders in mass-casualty incidents involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear agents.

“One of the emerging areas in the use of simulation is for emergency response, particularly in urban areas,” says Nick Giannis. Giannis is vice president of research and technology for Presagis, a Montreal-based company that produces what it calls commercial off-the-shelf software for simulation and modeling. Much of the company's efforts are aimed at the defense and aerospace industries.

To capture some of this emerging market, the company recently worked on a project for the Canadian government to improve emergency response to CBRN incidents. Presagis developed software that will represent a chemical cloud visually over an actual city; in this case they used Ottawa. In the training scenario, the cloud can move and grow over time, and emergency-response officials are forced to contend with the changing conditions, Giannis says.

Because the software is not preset, the training scenarios can change, Giannis says. For example, with Presagis' product, users can alter factors such as weather patterns, available apparatus, blocked streets and visibility. The system also allows users to assume any point of view, including multiple screens that one would see in a command center.

“You can start off five miles in the air and go right down to street level and actually walk the streets,” Giannis says. “You can have a wall full of monitors with each one being a potential view from a camera. The software simulates camera views by making the picture a little fuzzy or black and white.”

Another development that can be used to train for mass-casualty or CBRN incidents is something Presagis calls AI Implant, which is a crowd-behavior modeling system. The user can create a situation such as an explosion or other terrorist attack, create a setting, and populate it with anywhere from a few people to tens of thousands of people. The system will simulate how different types of people behave, such as slow-moving children or elderly, and even can be adapted for cultural differences to show how a crowd of Middle Easterners or North Americans will react. It also can be set for the different types of people who attend different events, such as a rock concert or a large religious gathering. In the simulation, the group will rush to the nearest exit bumping and pushing while others will stand by gawking at the scene.

“You can literally place tens of thousands of people in a stadium and watch them try to funnel their way out,” Giannis says.

This off-the-shelf product can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to as much as $50,000. The more complicated the system, the more it costs. Having maximum functionality for things like recording the training for later analysis and using a fire district's exact street and building maps will run the cost up. It operates with standard computer hardware, and software updates are available for an annual maintenance fee that's about 20% of the purchase cost.

Another approach to using simulation in this type of training is to bring the trainees to the simulation. That's what is going on at the Texas Engineering Extension Services, which is part of the Texas A&M system. Five years ago, TEEX's Emergency Operations Training Center received a charter from the Department of Homeland Security to develop incident command post-level training.

“Across the country there was a lot of simulation stuff being developed,” says Dave Nock, the center's director and its director of training. “DHS wanted us to look at larger-scale incidents that would address weapons of mass destruction and CBRN-types of incidents.”

The center originally looked at some off-the-shelf simulation products, but in the end opted to design its own. Part of what made that decision easier was the access it had to Texas A&M's engineering program. To develop this software without the university's help could cost as much as $2 million, Nock says. And tweaking or updating the system is as simple as a phone call. Since the pilot courses were run in February and March 2004, the center has conducted nearly 60 courses with about 40 participants in each.

The center's system is set up so that each decision made by the participants has an effect on the simulated incident. With each class having four different exercises on weapons of mass destruction, CBRN and large-scale incidents, none of the more than 250 exercises has had the same ending, he says. The simulation also can be set for different variables, such as whether or not the radio communication is interoperable.

TEEX offers two types of training. Individuals can take the course with participants from across the country using a generic community. Or, a department can provide mapping and resource data that is uploaded into the system; the department goes through the course with its own personnel in its own simulated community using its available resources.

Whether off the shelf or unique, the challenge for any simulation program is realism. And it is not just video-game-quality graphics that are important — simulations have to mimic real situations.

“We spend a lot of time studying activities that have happened in the last few years,” Nock says. The group is building a simulation for rail and transportation and paid close attention to what happened in March 2004 when al-Qaida bombed three commuter trains in Madrid, Spain. “We want to make sure that what we display is as accurate as possible.” And, he says, it seems to be working.

“After an exercise, I've had people step outside just make sure the world was OK,” Nock says. “Some of the participants will actually work up a sweat in dealing with some of the things that we present to them.”

In addition to the new course plans, Nock says the center has made several changes to the original version and is set to launch version two in a few months. One of the major changes involves the exercise control side that will allow for greater flexibility in changing the simulation based on the participants' decisions. Another improvement will be to the graphics and how the icons are represented and interacted with.

Having four years of this training under its belt, the center has seen the results.

“I had several comments back from different people who responded to the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes,” Nock says. “There have been several other cities that have had chemical accidents happen in the same sort of way (as the training).”

Nock says the center also is looking to incorporate more simulation training into the training that takes place at TEEX's Disaster City. Disaster City is part of the Brayton Fire Training Field, the largest training facility of its kind in the United States. He says they are about two to three years away from fully linking the incident command simulation to the search-and-rescue training on the ground at Disaster City.

Of course, no system is perfect and the “garbage in, garbage out” factor can limit the effectiveness of simulation. Both Nock and Giannis say that having complete mapping data is critical if the simulated training is meant to be modeled on a department's actual coverage area. A problem Giannis says his company runs into is the variety of different formats for GIS data. Nock adds that GIS data that does not take into account the latest developments and growth will hinder a simulated training exercise. Another hindrance is when a jurisdiction does not have an accurate inventory of all its resources, including those available through mutual aid.

Nock and Giannis also agree that simulation training is never likely to replace real training exercises. But they say that it is something that can augment training and is a tool that will continue to improve and be more widely used.

“I see simulation as improving the overall training experience,” Giannis says. There are situations where simulated training is less expensive than live training. Other times, simulation can serve as a rehearsal for live training. “In which case, you would get a higher success factor on your live exercise because you practiced it in simulation.”

When compared with paper-driven training exercises, simulation brings a higher level of realism and flexibility, Nock says. “A lot of times those paper injects were typed or even handwritten. [With simulation] the participant doesn't even realize that the decision that they made influenced the next level of simulation; they don't see anything given to them.”

Nock says he looks for simulated command training on large-scale incidents to improve in graphic displays, possible scenarios and communication links in the coming years.

“The neat thing about computer simulation is that as you design your scenario, you are only limited by the imagination of the scenario designer,” Nock says.

No one can say when or if computer simulated training for large-scale incidents will match what was science fiction only 20 years ago. But it is undeniably an important and growing component of such training.