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The Defacto System: Training Tool for Incident Commanders
Title: The Defacto System: Training Tool for Incident Commanders
Author: Nathan, Schurr, Janusz Marecki, J.P. Lewis, Milind Tambe and Paul Scerri
Date: April 19, 2005
Institution: Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, University of Southern California
Bibliographic Entry: Schurr, Nathan, et al. “The Defacto System: Training Tool for Incident Commanders.” Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, University of Southern California. 19 Apr 2005. http://www.usc.edu/dept/create/assets/001/50769.pdf
Electronic Link: http://www.usc.edu/dept/create/assets/001/50769.pdf
Key Words: training tool, simulation, intelligent agents, incident commanders, first responders
Summary of Key Issues, Points, Conclusions:
Recognizing the criticality of training and tactics evaluation for incident commanders, this team of researchers from the University of Southern California and Carnegie Mellon University undertook a project to build an operational, prototype -training tool for use by incident commanders. The system is labeled DEFACTO (Demonstrating Effective Flexible Agent Coordination of Teams through Omnipresence) and combines artificial intelligence, 3D visualization and human-interaction reasoning. The ability to fully simulate first responder tactics, decisions, and behaviors in simulated urban areas permits the incident commander to interact. This assists developers of coordination technology to identify key problems for real-world deployment of intelligent agents, which could manage some elements of coordination during future disaster response.
The report provides details on system construction, underlying technologies, experiments and evaluations (some with fire fighters in the Los Angeles area), and comparisons to previous agent software prototypes and research. The research team concludes the DEFACTO system has value as an emergency response-training tool.
Name of Researcher: Ann Marie Pease
Institution: Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University
Date Posted: Sept. 18, 2007