CODE RED: MOBILE, a Live\Synthetic Test Bed for Firefighter Training
Brian Quinn · 2016
Country Fire Authority (CFA) firefighters trialled the prototype exercise CODE RED: MOBILE at Hanging Rock. The exercise was in two parts: the Information Phase (Phase 1), where participants learned about the bushfire viewing media delivered in the 7scenes (7scenes.com) game framework on the iPad 3, and the Decision Making Phase (Phase 2), where participants made decisions based on their knowledge of this bushfire. Phase 1 and Phase 2 were in separate areas of the Hanging Rock Reserve. Participants were divided into two groups and received either static media or dynamic-static media about the bushfire. Both groups also viewed the same maps and text about the fire. Movies of the bushfire were made in the Sandbox2 game editor of Crysis Wars (crytek.com). A wind change moved the direction of the bushfire, and threatened several of four virtual houses. Participants had to correctly choose the three houses of the four that would probably burn down and one that would not burn. Group 1 saw annotated screenshots of movies made in the Sandbox2 editor, termed static media. Group 2 saw dynamic–static media which were annotated screenshots spliced into the same movies. There was no significant difference found between Group 1 and 2 for their performance in decision making and thus learning. This revealed that the media treatment had no detectable effect on their decision making. Spatio-temporal analyses, including heatmaps and fractal analysis, of participants’ GPS tracks were undertaken. The mean Fractal D of 19 participants, at the spatial scales of 10-250m, reflected the layout of paths, large spaces, and barriers in the Phase 2 game area, and five spatial domains were found. This provided a metric for analysing the game layout of the mobile training exercise.