CRIMSON

Project Overview

The CRIMSON project goal is to research, develop and validate an innovative crisis management training platform using the latest virtual reality and simulation technologies. This system is designed to address inter agency preparation, rehearsal and management of security missions including evacuation, search and rescue operations, active agents control and remediation, in response to urban crises such terrorist attacks, hostage seizure, CBR attacks, and fires.

The key project figures are:

• Duration: 1 December 2004 – 28 February 2007
• Project number: FP6-PASR-2004 / SEC4-PR-011500 (funded under the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme)
• Consortium: 8 partners from 4 European countries, respectively: C-S S.A. (France), MASA Group S.A. (France), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche – ISTI-CNR (Italy), Immersion S.A.S. (France), Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia – CRS4 (Italy), Crisis Research Center – Leiden University (Netherlands), Estonian Rescue Board (Estonia).

MASA Group is responsible of:

• Modeling and simulation of large scale population (from city to country levels)
• Modeling and simulation of emergency services

Challenges

How would it be possible to immerse incident management teams in situations where they can assess their procedures, train and experiment while seeing the actual effects and impact of their decisions on the operational theater? A key feature to relevantly represent a crisis is a reactive and dynamic populated environment.

Indeed, both military and civil security operations share a similar characteristic : population is no longer extraneous but becomes the key player. Therefore, the complexity of population behavior must be accounted for, and reproduced without being limited to a simple reproduction of urban traffic. The CRIMSON population module, developed by MASA Group, is therefore a fusion of real-time-assessed traffic simulation as well as a simulation of individual behaviors.

Solution

CRIMSON is an innovative, simulation-based software system that enables involvement of multiple participants from various first responder agencies (fire brigades, policemen, medical teams, military troops), and even the general public by presenting a 3D simulation and evaluation of complex crisis and contingency scenarios that would be difficult to rehearse and validate in real-world conditions.

This system acts as a unique tool for creating, communicating and sharing complex knowledge between users with very different training or institutional backgrounds. It dramatically enhances the planning and management efficiency of crises, the preparation of crisis management tasks, while at the same time, provides a captivating tool for collaborative training of the security actors. CRIMSON assists emergency services and public administrators (such as key decision-makers, public managers, policy makers, planners, legal executives, etc.) in visually exploring crisis scenarios to better prepare for crises and reach consensus on complex environmental and security risks before disaster strikes. At the same time, it gives primary intervention teams a clear and vivid understanding of the pressing realities of crisis management procedures that cannot be grasped through normal, routine training operations.

In addition, and in contrast to classical tools that only address emergency service specialists, CRIMSON makes it possible to determine how best to inform citizens in an efficient and effective manner through its virtual representation of potential events and adequate procedures.

The MASA Group population module is based on a proprietary technology, DirectIA. Independently of the number of individuals that are to be simulated, population is responsive, reacting to unexpected events, and therefore immersing the crisis management staff into a credible urban environment. Flexibility of the technology allows taking into account geographical and sociological specifics, adapting the representation to various cities and countries, at various scales (from neighborhood to country level).

Key benefits

• Preparation. The CRIMSON system imports geographical data . The trainers must define some environment properties (neighborhood capacities and population behaviors) and initialize simulated units involved in the scenario using the 3D user-friendly interface. CRIMSON supports huge volumes of real data, such as whole cities, which means that it is not limited to a tailored or fantasy world used in videogames. Thanks to the support of most of the standard formats and interoperability with existing software, operators can import their own geographic and mapping data in the system that will represent their everyday environment.
• Execution. As trainees are gathered in the war room receiving information from the crisis scene through their usual communication tools, operators are completely immersed into a crisis which is producing relevant reports according to the crisis situation. Thanks to a dynamic and responsive environment including autonomous simulated commanding units driven by MASA DirectIA, the trainer stimulates the crisis itself instead of animating the environment. CRIMSON offers a credible representation of the urban theatre, including crowds and traffic, and simulates an ongoing crisis for the trainees to cope with or for planning purposes.
• After Action Review. A replayer tool lets trainers and trainees review the crisis sequence of events and the trainees’ decisions regarding those events, for an immediate “lessons learned” capability.

Downloads

CRIMSON urban crisis simulation video