This training was the first event in the UK which used a virtual reality simulation training tool to simulate wildfires. The international wildfire training at the Northumberland FRS is part of the Initiative for Global Management of big fires through Simulation (IGNIS) programme, funded by the European Commission through DG ECHOs Civil Protection Financial Instrument.



During the training, fire officers and incident commanders from France, Italy and Portugal came to the UK to train the management and control of large scale and complex wildfire incidents. Within the virtual reality setting, participants had to work together with different parts of the command chain, ensuring the command structures worked seamlessly while managing the wildfire incident in order to keep the virtual people safe.

Paul Hedley, chief fire officer at Northumberland FRS, said, “Wildfires can have devastating effects and it is paramount that we know how to manage and suppress them effectively when they arise, which we are able to do through the use of this training tool which allows us to work with all areas of command and our international agencies to coordinate the effective management of a wildfire.”

Frank Mills, CEO of Coventry University Enterprises (CUE) and Joost Beerthuis, CEO of XVR Simulation, signed the agreement and marked the organisations’ commitment to a lengthy integration of their sales and support activities in the region.



Extensive preparations

A two year period of preparations went in to forming the agreement and the business plan. Both parties were already collaborating on projects with the Singapore Civil Defense Force and Singapore Home Team Academy, and were looking to formalize and expand their cooperation. With the strategic partnership, both XVR Simulation and CUE are looking to guarantee a long term presence in the Asian market. To achieve and strengthen a leading position, XVR and CUE will both be locally represented.

The partnership with CUE gives XVR Simulation an academic and pedagogic background to their virtual simulation training software. Being able to offer an incident command simulation platform with the academic infrastructure, credibility and network of Coventry University will offer a great advantage towards training centres in Asia.

Coventry University Enterprise

Coventry University Enterprises Limited (CUE Ltd), a subsidiary of Coventry University Higher Education Corporation, is the organisation through which the University runs much of its commercial, income-generating and business-partnership work.

XVR Simulation

XVR Simulation is the world’s leading developer of simulation technology for the education, training and assessment of safety & security professionals. It is the mission of XVR Simulation to enhance the knowledge and expertise of these professionals, improving their preparedness for any incident or disaster.

XVR On Scene 2017

The launch of OS 2017 marks the conclusion to an extensive development period. XVR OS 2017 allows users to work far more efficiently by giving them the opportunity to copy previously-made automated scenario parts into a new scenario. It’s also possible to use pop-up screens to confront participants with a multiple choice question, which could trigger automated actions. Users were given the newest version at the end of the User Group Meeting.



User Group Meeting

The User Group Meeting is an annual success for XVR Simulation and is a very appreciated event amongst users. Users are able to exchange tips, ideas and knowledge amongst themselves and the XVR team. Moreover, users get some insight in XVR Simulations future planning for the product range and general operational management.

After the delivery of XVR OS version 2016, we started an extensive process to stabilize and clean up the software code before we proceeded to work on new features to really ensure the quality of XVR OS. Quality Control Manager Dave Garbett: “This maintenance step will be very beneficial for future versions of XVR OS as it forms a strong, stable and reliable foundation for new features and demanding scenarios”.

Working on the foundation
Over the years, XVR On Scene has become an extensive program. Our responses to the demand for higher realism, larger scenario’s and a larger number of participants have sometimes led to issues and instability as we reached the limits of the original code base. Instead of keeping on building and expanding, we decided to take a moment to clean up the code, providing us with a sustainable codebase for the future, which is more stable and agile.

Closed beta test
Three different departments have worked full time on stabilizing the product over the course of the past year. Known sources of issues were fixed, and the entire code has been scrutinized to avoid future difficulties. After this stabilization period the program was given to a select number of XVR users during a closed beta test. The feedback from this closed beta will be used to fix blocking issues prior to launch, with remaining issues being scheduled for service packs. We will all be happy when our efforts ultimately result in an even more stable and reliable product.

Ongoing process
Launching the 2017 update for XVR On Scene does not mean we’re done developing and improving. Not only will we release fixes for remaining issues in service packs, we also keep on listening to feedback users give us. Dave Garbett: “Customer feedback is very valuable to us. With it, the three departments (Service & Support, Quality Control and Production) can keep on improving XVR On Scene”.

CEO Joost Beerthuis and Director of Maritime Development Tim Lodder of XVR Simulation joined the management team of FMTC consisting of Rob Bruinsma, Erwin Roos and Joeri van de Watering to sign the agreement at the FMTC safety training centre near Schiphol Airport.

With the agreement, FMTC aims to expand their existing training curriculum of theoretical and practical training with virtual reality training. The implementation of virtual reality to the training curriculum provides FMTC with a blended learning environment, offering even more flexibility for FMTC customers.

XVR Simulation will train a team of instructors at FMTC. Together with the FMTC instructors, XVR Simulation will be able to further expand their scenario database with maritime, offshore and industry-specific scenarios. The partnership with FMTC also allows XVR Simulation to further expand their maritime market.

Tim Lodder (XVR Simulation) is excited about the newly formed partnership: “Not only does XVR Simulation share a lot of core values with FMTC like flexibility and customer focus, this partnership also gives us an edge towards our future maritime market development.”

Rob Bruinsma (FMTC) is optimistic about the future: “As training centre we strongly believe in the combination of virtual training and real life training. Learning by practising as much as possible is our motto. We aim to be fully operational with XVR Simulation after the summer.”

--------------------------


XVR Simulation and FMTC sign partnership agreement. Pictured from left to right: Erwin Roos, Tim Lodder, Rob Bruinsma, Joeri van de Watering, Joost Beerthuis

About FMTC
FMTC is the newest safety training centre for Maritime training (STCW), Offshore training (OPITO & NOGEPA), Wind training (GWO) and Industry training. You can find us at the practice centre of the Fire Brigade Amsterdam at Schiphol Amsterdam and Dordrecht near Rotterdam, the Netherlands. This guarantees realistic practices and assures working with the best materials and most committed instructors. Besides safety, also flexibility has a high level of priority. This means that you can start training right now, whenever it suits you.
For more information please visit our website at www.fmtc.nl or contact Anouk ter Harmsel via anouk@fmtc.nl

About XVR Simulation
XVR Simulation is the world’s leading developer of simulation technology for the education, training and assessment of safety & security professionals. It is the mission of XVR Simulation to enhance the knowledge and expertise of these professionals, improving their preparedness for any incident or disaster. The XVR platform offers a set of modular solutions for all your training objectives, from operational to strategic command levels.
For more information please visit our website at www.xvrsim.com or contact Tim Lodder via lodder@xvrsim.com

Setting an example

The way the DSCGR has implemented XVR On Scene in their training curriculum is a great example for other users. Nine operators have been put through the XVR Train the Trainer course and are already creating their own scenarios with a variety of car accidents, (wild)fires and floods. Two weeks after the Train the Trainer course, XVR was used in a flooding exercise to assess the flood responsiveness of the Mont-Dore city hall.

Why and how XVR is used

The versatility of XVR On Scene and the large base of French speaking users already using the system were the two main reasons for DSCGR to choose XVR. They aim to use XVR to both teach and train civil security personnel like firefighters and city hall employees. The DSCGR invited their partners of the (military) police, ambulance, industrial sites and airport to present XVR officially. 

The next step for DSCGR is to visit more experienced XVR users in France to exchange best practices and experiences. The implementation at DSCGR has been done in partnership with our French partner ECASC VALABRE, the school of civil security application of Valabre. 

During these sessions, which were held at the Rotterdam The Hague Airport, a total of 42 participants were trained in 6 different scenarios. The 42 participants were operational supervisors of both RTHA as well as Safety region Rotterdam Rijnmond. Schiphol airport provided an observer/instructor.

Primary training goals were:
- improving the decision making process
- training specific RTHA procedures
- Awareness of potential dangers of aviation incidents

During every trainings session, a total of seven people were simultaneously trained on six different screens, with linked XVR On Scene users. Every session consisted of one officer on duty, an on scene commander of the RTHA, a RTHA coordinator and four commanding officers. The training has been very successful and received a 7,8 out of 10 during evaluation.

Virtual reality head mounts
It is our expectation that we will be fully incorporating the use of virtual reality head mounts in XVR On Scene 2017. This means you will be able to use an Oculus Rift headset, or HTC Vive headset to train within an On Scene scenario. Users will be completely immersed in the virtual environments of XVR, while the instructors uses a screen to observe what the students sees. With the HTC Vive, students are even able to walk freely within a 3 by 3 space, while being fully able to interact with the room with two controllers. This provides for a much more immersive experience, as movements of the students body are registered as well.

Click on this link to see a video about XVR connected to the HTC vive

We are also supporting our partner IISRI, which is part of Deakin University (Victoria, Australia) to create a more immersive training method with added realism elements. In this hybrid firefighting training, users are not only wearing an head mounted display, but wear added features for more immersion. For example heat generating jackets to simulate the warmth of an actual fire and real hoses and nozzles that are connected to a powered hose reel, to simulate the forces of the water flowing through the hose.

Mixed reality
Naturally, we also look further ahead. One particularly interesting development is the introduction of Mixed reality (or hybrid reality). This is a mix of virtual and augmented reality, which basically means it will be possible to implement virtual objects into our real world. The possibilities for XVR with mixed reality are endless. Just think of mapping out a digital, interactive region map on your conference table to handle the logistics of incident management with XVR Resource Management. Or holding a virtual extinguisher to put out fires in your own kitchen in XVR On Scene. Mixed reality is still very much in development, but certainly has a lot of promise for us.

Our Research and Development team keeps close tabs on new developments and innovations. If you know of any innovative developments and you want more information on how to incorporate this in XVR? Please mail to info@xvrsim.com.

Do you want to stay updated on all the news on XVR Simulation? We will keep you posted. Simply subscribe to our newsletter.

These projects provided us with the opportunity and the budget to develop a number of significant improvements in XVR On Scene. Consider for instance:

- Pathfinding, navigation mesh and collision avoidance
- Interactive wildfire front
- Multi-operator
- Call signs
- Re-usable and extended tasks and events
- Participant interaction with the virtual world
- Multiple Choice
- Virtual BA Board
- After Action Review module
- Logging

In order to allow our customers to also benefit from these improvements, we are investing extra time and attention in the stabilized integration of these new functions of XVR. We expect the new functionalities to be introduced to the licence step by step starting with the XVR 2017 delivery, but surely we can already state the XVR Platform is ‘future proof’!

Of course we will share the future roadmap with our customers during the next User Group Meeting taking place from 28 to 29 June 2017