TUT scientists help create new crisis management simulation system
How to prepare for crises like snowstorms, forest fires, floods, earthquakes, and industrial and traffic accidents? Scientists at Tallinn University of Technology (TUT) have created a simulation system for professionals to carry out computer-based trainings. The system was created in cooperation with scientists from 15 EU nations, as well as Israel and several private and public sector organizations.
In Estonia, for example, the system created in the framework of the CRISMA project allows to prepare for the events that occur almost every winter – multiple vehicle collisions due to icy road surface, like the collision of 13 cars on the Tallinn-Narva highway in January this year.
The quick, reasonable, and coordinated activity of ambulance and rescue service can be trained with the so-called serious computer gaming. A great advantage of the new simulation system is the ability to use and integrate other existing simulation systems, for example systems that model the cooling of houses caused by absence of heating in case of an accident, the spreading of cyclones, the evacuation of residents and damage to buildings caused by an earthquake or a landslide.
"The main results of the CRISMA project are the framework and methodology, which enable to put together a simulation system to prepare for any type of crisis," Professor of TUT’s Department of Informatics and Head of the Laboratory of Socio-Technical Systems, Kuldar Taveter, said. "In addition to crises caused by forces of nature, the training systems created by means of the framework and methodology resulting from CRISMA can also be used for preparing the decision-makers for managing crises caused by people. To adjust the system to different types of crises, however, additional software development work must still be done in each case."
The simulation system was created with the support of the European Union.
Editor: M. Oll
