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Creation and Use of Virtual Simulations for Measuring Situation Awareness of Incident Commanders

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Information Technology in Disaster Risk Reduction (ITDRR 2022)

Part of the book series: IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology ((IFIPAICT,volume 672))

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Abstract

Training and measurement of situation awareness (SA) in a dynamic decision-making context is a complex task and depends on personal factors as well as time, space, and situation. Therefore, to measure first-level incident commanders’ SA several authentic and immersive virtual simulations of rescue incidents should be used. In this paper, we report on Effective Command and the dynamic decision-making assessment methodology as a theoretical framework for SA assessment and implementation of virtual reality software using sixteen different virtual simulations in an organization. First, we report four aspects needed to be implemented for virtual simulation-based assessment of SA. Next, we analysed the differences between three SA ascending levels: perception, comprehension, and prediction that might be influenced by the scenario storyline. According to prior research, we would expect the difficulty of the three SA levels to be in ascending order and we evaluated that by analysing N = 665 assessment results. We confirmed such an ascending order for most scenarios, and we also identified these scenarios for which this assumption was not met. Finally, we discuss the possibilities of analysing the scenario-based SA level differences in the future when assessing SA with more automated measures. We argue that by improving the assessment of SA, we can foster the training possibilities for incident commanders’ dynamic decision-making.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Estonian Rescue Board and The Estonian Academy of Security Sciences for continues funding of rescue incidents training and SA assessments. We struggle to express our profound thankfulness for all the work of the assessors doing the assessments as well building new assessment scenarios using CAPM. Thank you, Katherine Lamb’s, for your yearly efforts in training and certifying assessors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Estonian Academy of Security Sciences, Tallinn, Estonia

    Stella Polikarpus

  2. Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

    Edna Milena Sarmiento-Márquez & Tobias Ley

Authors
  1. Stella Polikarpus
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  2. Edna Milena Sarmiento-Márquez
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  3. Tobias Ley
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stella Polikarpus .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway

    Terje Gjøsæter

  2. University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway

    Jaziar Radianti

  3. Tsuda University, Tokyo, Japan

    Yuko Murayama

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Polikarpus, S., Sarmiento-Márquez, E.M., Ley, T. (2023). Creation and Use of Virtual Simulations for Measuring Situation Awareness of Incident Commanders. In: Gjøsæter, T., Radianti, J., Murayama, Y. (eds) Information Technology in Disaster Risk Reduction. ITDRR 2022. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 672. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34207-3_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34207-3_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-34206-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-34207-3

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