Emergency Response Planning and Training through Interactive Simulation and Visualizationwith Decision Support

Bruce Donald Campbell, Huseyin Onur Mete, Tom Furness, Suzanne Weghorst, Zelda ZabinskyPacific Rim Visualization and Analytics Center (PARVAC)

University of Washington, Seattle, Washingtonbrucedc, mete, tfurness, weghorst, zelda@u.washington.edu

Abstract—Teams of first responders work together to effectively managea community-wide crisis. Traditionally, key groups such as police, fire, andmedical are each trained for specific emergency procedures. Emergencyresponse teams design training exercises to augment an individual’scognition associated with performing time critical roles. The aggregationof all individual cognition, distributed through communications, suggests asituation awareness that an incident commander requires to performoptimal decision-making. We are developing a computer-supportedsimulation environment with a decision support tool called the RimSim, tofacilitate emergency response planning and training of first responders. Wemodularize RimSim for synchronous multi-player use or asynchronousindividual use with simulated participants. Through interactive computer-supported role-play with shared visualizations, we are able to studydistributed cognition with a long-term goal of identifying opportunities forimproving information management during emergency response. We aim toimprove mindful distributed cognition for first responders duringemergency response to natural and man-made crises.

1. INTRODUCTION

First responders deserve ample opportunity to plan and trainfor their contribution within community-wide crisisresponse scenarios. We have observed some shortcomingsof requiring synchronous participation in drills and tabletopexercises. Personnel who manage unforeseen crises on adaily basis fill Emergency Response Center (ERC) roles.Synchronous participation can be augmented byasynchronous opportunities to train. Computer-basedsimulations offer the ability to participate in asynchronoustraining exercises. The RimSim simulation environmentenables first responders to familiarize themselves with otherroles within a response effort in order to improve situationawareness and distributed cognition. Through repeatdealings with complex decision-making response scenarios,first responders can become skilled in training theirreadiness by learning how to be more mindful about howthey think as well as gaining the ability to create a thoughtprocess that leads to better perceptual and cognitive flowduring stressful times.

Decisions to support preparedness and response activitiesfor disaster management are challenging due to theuncertainties of events and complications due to the lack ofreal time data. Current societal plans for first responsepreparedness include appropriate division of labor for firstresponders and emergency operation center personnelthrough guidelines like the National Incident ManagementSystem (NIMS) and a slowly improving public awareness ofappropriate response actions by the general public. Acrossthe country, emergency response drills and tabletopexercises are taking place to familiarize role players withtheir duties in emergency response scenarios.

Within the Regional Visualization and Analytics Center(RVAC) community, the Purdue University RVAC(PURVAC) [1] is involved with simulating large responseactivities with the Indiana Department of HomelandSecurity in their Muscatatuck urban training facility [2]; theUniversity of Washington Health Center (UWHC)emergency response teams stage regular drills to preparehospital staff for a wide variety of emergency scenarios; andthe Northeast Visualization and Analytics Center (NEVAC)at Penn State University continues to develop a NeoCITIESprogram to test team collaborative decision-makingprocesses in a command and control environment [3]. Drillsand exercises typically take place every three to six monthsand test a different emergency response scenario each time.

Large community disaster events like Katrina andSeptember 11 are not reoccurring events with whichcommunities can train physically for emergency response.As a result, we look to create planning and trainingopportunities through other means that can provide anappropriate mental model for visualizing and simulatingeffective action. Paper-based workshops are useful forflushing out an overall plan and its effectiveness, butindividuals may wish to train repetitively with multiplescenarios to develop a strong sense of their potentialcontribution under varying conditions, especially if theywant to become more mindful of their thought process. Therange of potential man-made and natural emergencyscenarios continues to increase as transportation andinformation networks expand worldwide.

The RimSim team has developed a modular softwaredevelopment model with which to build emergencyresponse simulations and has begun to build a scenario forfive members of a medical logistics team within an urbancenter ERC. To test our methodology, we consider twomajor earthquake scenarios within the Seattle, Washingtonarea: Seattle Fault and Cascadia Subduction Zone. Weacknowledge the difficulty of building a realistic scenario ofsuch magnitude, but believe we can focus on representativecomplexity and data sharing overlap to the point of buildingan asynchronous planning and training tool for firstresponder mindfulness.

2. MOTIVATION

The Embodied Mind

A growing community of cognitive scientists testhypotheses that our minds develop primarily throughinteraction with the external world. We grow our mindsthrough experiences and our cognition becomes theculmination of the history of our experiences. We learnthrough interaction with objects and use our bodies often todo so. Francisco Varela et al. refer to the embodied mindthat exists when the mind is brought closer to the body asopposed to becoming disembodied through abstract, open-ended reflection [4]. Edwin Hutchins’ ethnographic studiesof large ship navigation teams demonstrated how

sophisticated cognition could arise through peopleinteracting with external objects, shared artifacts, and otherpeople without requiring abstract internal representations[5]. Hutchins details how such a distributed cognition makesa team of navigators ready for emergency responsescenarios encountered during navigation in narrow waterswith changing environmental conditions.

Emergency response drills allow teams of emergencyresponse workers in an ERC to work together to practicetheir roles in the chaotic environment they will likelyencounter at crisis time. Drill participants gain practiceusing the external tools with which they expect to beequipped. They gain practice communicating through sharedartifacts they expect to generate for emergencymanagement. They gain practice communicating andproblem solving with other team members and across ERCteams. These drills seem the more valuable when embracingthe hypothesis of an embodied mind as first respondersembody tools, artifacts, and people as extensions of theirmind-body resource. Each participant has the opportunity toperform their role and drill coordinators can make sure thewhole ERC is structured as effectively as possible. As acollaborative unit, they aim to share one superset embodiedmind.

Drill participants are not always provided details about theembodied mind hypothesis before they participate in a drill.This makes sense when the coordination team is watchingthe drill and changing conditions to keep the drillparticipants active. If a person or team is done managing anissue that arises, coordinators inject another to complicateroles so participants must remain engaged. When performedin this manner, drills push the cognitive load for each teammember such that they have little slack for considering howthey are thinking about the problem — the meta-thinkingRichard Heuer Jr. suggests is significant to develop forgaining maximum effectiveness [6].

Evaluating the success of a drill across all participants is atedious and demanding process for the drill coordinationteam. Evaluators focus on evaluating the distribution oflabor, roles, and verification that the physical tools, artifacts,and social relationships shared among the ERC and firstresponders in the field are well designed for the scenariotested. Given the high cost of such evaluations, additionaltesting for the embodied mind hypothesis during drill timetaxes the overall system evaluation.

The RimSim provides individual training opportunities toallow a participant to consider the embodied mindperspective for learning. As we consider the mind as anextension of the body, we see opportunities to train the mindin ways congruent to how we train the body. When trainingthe body for a task, we explicitly identify the steps we wantto take to perform a complex task. When performingemergency response, we can identify the thought process wewish to take to perform a complex task as well. These stepsinclude manipulating external tools, interacting with sharedartifacts, and communicating with other people. Byexternalizing our thought process, we can train our mindsimilarly to how we train our body – a potential benefit ofconsidering and testing the embodied mind hypothesis.

As we consider the embodied mind hypothesis, we findparticipants who are mindful of the thought actions they aretaking have a better chance of avoiding error. Mindfulnesscomes through experience that requires repetition to train

the mind — in a manner similar to how a musician practicesplaying music with her instrument. Repeat role-play underchanging conditions and replay of same conditions allows aparticipant to develop mindfulness as a skill that can beapplied to any crisis, training the mind as a firefighter trainshis body to manage heavy equipment effectively understress. To maximize simulated role-play opportunities theRimSim architecture supports both synchronous andasynchronous training modes.

Synchronous or Asynchronous Training

Repetitive role-play within a scenario builds experience indealing with complexity under urgent conditions. In a livedrill, participants cannot realistically stop the drill toidentify a mistake they made and roll back the drill tocorrect the error and continue forward. Significant enougherrors more often require a new drill following a debriefingthat occurs after the fact. Participants learn the significanceof making errors in a realistic way because mistakes aren’teasily corrected in a live crisis, but they might never get achance to play out that scenario with what they think is theright action. Validating error hypotheses becomes difficultand corrective actions are not re-enforced. The ability totrain asynchronously provides a participant more flexibilityin adjusting for errors through individual time lines.

In a team environment, many errors are the result ofcommunication breakdowns that are harder to simulate dueto the wide variety of communication styles andcommunication devices. Where team members need tocommunicate often, synchronous role-playing seemsnecessary for training the social cognition aspects of anembodied mind approach. Seeing benefits to bothasynchronous and synchronous training through simulation,RimSim architecture supports both on a role-by-role basis.

3. RIMSIM ARCHITECTURE

We have modularized the software support facilities ofRimSim in order to allow parallel development of code basesneeded to implement software-based simulation. We believean iterative development model allows us to test out usefulideas rapidly and get immediate feedback. Our RimSimarchitecture in Figure 1 supports the implementedsimulation shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1. The RimSim Architecture.

We engineer RimSim components to interact well in threemodule clusters to support Stuart Card’s recommendedmodel of technology support for augmenting cognition incomplex activities [7]. Card’s model identifies three majorcategories for cognition support components: socialcogn i t ion modules supporting asynchronous andsynchronous communications services between firstresponders and the ERC are iterated upon to reflect realisticcommunications channel behavior during emergencies;dynamic visualization modules are provided for sharedartifact investigation using shared geospatial visualizationwith dynamic layers that build and communicate situationawareness over time; machine algorithm support featuresare provided primarily through a simulation engine thatmanages simulation attributes for sharing among agents inthe simulation. We develop and add other algorithm supportmodules to communicate through the simulation engineservices interface.

Modular software provides an opportunity for flexiblydesigning individual and group emergency responsesimulation exercises. We iteratively build modules toencode our framework in RimSim software that individualscan use to plan or train on scenarios with other liveparticipants or with simulated participants. By remainingfaithful to the master RimSim architecture plan, we assureour modules some reusability and interoperability for futurescenario development.

We design communications server architecture to enablemultiple live participants to pass messages betweeninstantiations of any R i m S i m client. The samecommunication server also enables messages to be passedbetween simulated role-players to live players to the pointwhere only one live player need be planning or training atany point in time. Synchronous communication channelsprovide text and voice communications between liveparticipants that can be degraded to reflect inferiorcommunication channels so often encountered in crisisscenarios. Asynchronous communication channels allowfirst responders in the field to upload text, images, video orglobal-positioning information without requiring asynchronous communicator at the other end of thecommunication.

To support asynchronous training, RimSim simulationservices must support simulated participants similar to howother key agents in a role-play scenario are simulated.Agent-based frameworks have been developed andvalidated to support a wide range of simulation subjects [8].Time, cost, material usage, and human health metrics help afirst responder assess their aptitude in performing firstresponder roles, but to do so all relevant entities existing inan emergency response scenario must be simulated.Simulating another role-player represents the complex endof the simulation challenge, but existing general-purpose,multiple, agent-based frameworks are appropriate forsimulating many emergency response activities, especiallythose associated with logistics roles identified in the NIMSHandbook. We architect RimSim to be able to incorporate anagent-based framework for simulation support.

Many machine algorithm tools are helpful in supportingemergency response. We see a historical transition ofreliance upon external mechanical devices towards moreand more reliance upon electrical computing devices inemergency response. Although first responders have areduced capacity for performing mental calculations under

time pressure duress, they become very capable atincorporating the output of complex computations ifpresented in a way consistent with traditional heuristics firstresponders have been trained upon.

Mechanical devices are less dependent on communicationschannels and provide a more literal use of the embodiedmind through direct manipulation of the body, but webelieve computer-driven computation services will continueto become more and more popular as decision-support tools.The RimSim architecture allows for decision-supportmodules to participate with core simulation services forrole-playing scenarios such that first responders canmanipulate decision support tools with an embodied mind.

As relevant role-play data is shared between live role-players, simulated role-players and decision-supportservices, dynamic visualization services provide sharedartifacts role-players can use to plan and train their actions.As both the scientific visualization and informationvisualization communities test out an increasing number ofvisualization techniques for human sense-making andsituation awareness activities, we design the RimSimarchitecture to incorporate solutions that show promise forthe role-play scenarios we wish to train. Wholeimprovisional visualization frameworks like Prefuse [10] orImprovise [11] can be incorporated into a RimSim client orhandcrafted solutions can be tried on the fly as well. Arelational data services component mediates dataorganization between the simulation services and thedynamic visualization services.

4. AN IMPLEMENTATION FOREMERGENCY RESPONSE

The RimSim team attended a variety of emergency responsedrills at ERCs of different sizes: county, city, andneighborhood. We found a response team of five medicallogistics personnel who worked at the city level to improvemedical supply and personnel first response to an injuredpublic. In combating a major chlorine gas leak scenario, themedical logistics team used physical tools, external artifacts,and social relationships within the team and with other ERCteams in a manner that suggested good distributed cognitionas defined by Hutchins [5]. We began to create a simulationframework for use in training a medical logistics team foremergency response during earthquakes.

Medical Logistics Case Study

Upon interviewing and observing medical logistic teamresponders in action within the ERC at the University ofWashington Medical Center, the RimSim team modelled themedical logistics team as performing five critical activities:coordinating supplies received from other jurisdictions, real-time allocation of supplies to point-of-use, bed managementfor injured persons across all resources, generation of make-shift shelters and new points of service, and trafficmanagement for supply delivery trucks and medicalresponse vehicles. Medical logistics team members share asituation awareness that grows in importance wheneverdecision-making for one activity overlaps with decision-making for another. Team members share geospatial andtemporal data needs regarding medical casualties, vehiclerouting, first responder locations, point-of-service locations,medical supply inventories, and other resources.

We offer RimSim architecture to support an iterative,modular software development process that lets us test outuseful response plans rapidly to get timely user feedback.We studied an earthquake scenario within the medicallogistics team and implemented a first aid responsesimulator for the real-time allocation of supplies to point-of-use activity logician to train upon. As a key activity withinthe earthquake scenario, we developed a decision supportmodule to assist with the decisions regarding the locationand allocation of medical supplies. For disaster response,the optimization model provides support for thetransportation of materials from warehouses to hospitals,including the loading and routing of vehicles. As a result,the medical logistics team has access to a decision-supportsystem while playing the RimSim. We iterate upon theRimSim display to improve activity cognition through ashared dynamic visualization.

Dynamic Visualization

We iterate upon the RimSim display to improve cognition throughvisualizations that support an externalized thought process of anembodied mind. Figure 2 shows a RimSim architecture supportedrole-play client display in action. Using the display to supportembodied thinking, the role-player, interacting with an unfoldingemergency response crisis scenario simulation, tries to minimizecosts while minimizing loss of life.

Figure 2. A RimSim supported role-playing client

To demonstrate the flexibility of our architecture, weplugged in a whole-Earth globe visualization service for ourdynamic visualization component and built a decision-support tool to verify our architecture could communicatewith simulation services to support role-play training inreal-time. As a coordinating artifact, familiarity with aconsistent geospatial visualization assists in knowledgeconstruction and decision support [9]. The RimSim softwareapplication in Figure 2 is representative of the interface anddynamic visualization that all role players could use duringa distributed response – consisting of a geospatial interfacewith a drill-down traffic management system, and animationof the simulated actual or predicted movement of criticalresources. Tabular resource management widgets provideredundant information for those who lack map interpretationskills.

The fact role-players use the visualization and support services inFigure 2 to embody resource sinks and sources as objects in theirmind verified our overall architecture as relevant to training anembodied mind. A central communications server sharessimulation and visualization data between actual or simulated role-players. A relational data service keeps track of local attribute

values within each role-player’s application client. We iterate uponthe RimSim display to improve cognition through visualization ofall relevant attributes, allowing us to demonstrate our ideas whilecontinually improving each component independently.

We continue to validate our RimSim architecture through thedevelopment of future dynamic visualization modules in a similarmanner. As we talk to users, we hear concerns about how clutter inthe display contributes to information overload. Role-players wantinformation presented in ways they are familiar with in order tobetter apply an embodied mind to the recognition-primed decisionmaking process that Gary Klein popularizes through his research[12]. To reduce cognitive load, we implemented an example of amachine algorithm service to support embodied thinking throughan advanced heuristic computation that could not reasonably becalculated in real-time by the role player.

Optimization for Decision Support

The location and inventory levels of stored medical suppliesmust be shown to have a low risk of earthquake damagethemselves, yet provide fast distribution to hazardous areas.Moreover, the transportation routes are at risk of sustainingdamage, which has to be considered in the allocation ofmaterials to point-of-use. Mete and Zabinsky [13][14]present optimization models for disaster preparedness andresponse to assist with decisions for the location andallocation of medical supplies to be used in emergencies inthe Seattle area that is vulnerable to earthquakes. Hospitalsin the area share nine warehouses for medical supply storageand experts predict 22 hospitals, in a major earthquakescenario, will have higher demand than their dailyoperations. Considering the possible disaster scenarios forthe Seattle area, their stochastic programming modelgenerates an optimal plan for the location and inventorylevels of medical supplies in the preparation phase and aninitial plan for the transportation of medical supplies inearthquake response.

Upon simulating the onset of disaster scenarios, RimSimprovides continuous monitoring of the disaster zone, whichis necessitated by the dynamic nature of the earthquakeresponse, and enable a role-player to conduct medicalsupply distribution according to overall disaster fieldinformation. As well as the demand of hospitals, we monitorthe supply amounts in warehouses including the incomingaid contributions from external jurisdictions. The currentroad availabilities and vehicle assignments are alsopresented. RimSim role-players can either suggest their ownvehicle assignments and routing or consult with theembedded mixed-integer programming model to acceptsuggestions provided by Mete and Zabinsky [13][14] foroptimal loading and routing of vehicles. The role-player hasliberty to apply the solution partially, send off their ownsupply truck decisions, and re-run the model to see any newsuggestions for supply deliveries based on the resultantstate. The decision support module can be called repeatedlyas the field information continues to arrive.

Even though the focus of the mathematical model has beenon decision support for emergency response scenarios, wehave found the work to be seamlessly implemented within alarger planning and training simulation that need not focuson decision support, but role-play experience for developingthe embedded mind of the player. Given the modular anditerative development approach to testing out the RimSimarchitecture, other heuristic support modules can be

provided for complex problem solving support in a similarmanner.

5. CONCLUSION

As an emergency response-planning tool, geospatialvisualizations promote distributed cognition through sharedartifacts. The visualizations are only as good as the datacontained within and the tool is only as good as its usability.Through identifying mental models that support anembodied mind hypothesis and creating a flexible RimSimarchitecture to advise role-play application development forrole-play training and planning, we work to improve firstresponder participation in data collection and first responseactivity with software that presents a useful complexitylevel of crisis scenarios for emergency response planningand training.

Upon building RimSim architecture to align with popularmodels of augmenting cognition through technology, wetested out our architecture through development of a role-play training solution for a member of the medical logisticsteam within an ERC. As RimSim is an approach more than aspecific solution, we continue to search out collaborativeopportunities for incorporating other software modules intoRimSim implementations. Through continued use ofRimSim supported role-play simulation opportunities, weaim to generate useful discussion on the applicability of theembodied mind hypothesis in supporting individual anddistributed cognition among first responders for effectiveperformance. We hope a major by-product of better-distributed cognition will be a better situation awarenessthat helps all participants in emergency management.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSWe thank the Pacific Rim Visualization and Analysis Center(PARVAC), the National Visualization and AnalyticsCenter (NVAC), and the Department of Homeland Security(DHS) for providing primary funding and support for theRimSim project.

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