Distributed HAZMAT Training Using Adapted Gaming Technology

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant) Contemporary Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) regulation requires that hazardous waste site workers and emergency responders maintain considerable competency in methods and techniques of waste site and emergency response work, as well as a depth of knowledge concerning safety criteria, personal protective equipment, site assessment, instrumentation, and related skills. Workers and businesses are often challenged to accomplish any training due to lack of delivery systems or availability of trainers. The obstacles are often geographic or cost driven, where a business entity cannot afford to lose valuable staff to travel long distance or trainers are not available to come to job sites. Psychological limitations of traditional training materials such as video and PowerPoint, where interactivity is missing, result in undesirable, boring experiences for users. A proposed solution is to exploit developments in the commercial gaming industry by adapting game technology to produce a distributed, multi-player, online virtual environment to train individuals and teams in critical HAZMAT skills. Forterra Systems proposes to study this proposition by developing a typical training scenario and environment using gaming technology, performing an instructional design, conducting user tests with the target audiences, and analyzing the results. The impact on cost effectiveness and distance learning will be addressed. These efforts will lay the foundation for a roadmap that defines future developments for a system that will put users in an engaging and realistic virtual environment where they can collaboratively interact with other real people rather than being inundated with web pages and PowerPoint slides. Such a system will spark the competitive spirit and promote the desire to repeat exercises and achieve superior outcomes as an individual and as part of a response team. The resulting system will provide a cost effective solution that minimizes travel requirements for users, leverages instructors and subject matter experts, provides a rich environment to facilitate rapid transfer of training, and relies on commodity computer hardware as a host. It also leverages investments by Forterra itself, other government agencies, and general technology developments in the commercial gaming industry. Finally, the game-based technology is consistent with the cultural milieu that workers are growing up with today so if the development is successful, it will be a system they want to use.