Techvelopment and innovation – an example

The Red Cross Red Crescent develops and implements many technically strong trainings, particularly for emergency response. However, to scale up in interventions, it is vital to keep exploring new ways of facilitating knowledge.

Virtual reality (VR) training software has been gaining ground in teaching soft skills in emergency and crisis management in recent years, for example by rehearsing procedures, chains of command, triage, establishing safety, crowd control etc.

In 2018, the PS Centre had the opportunity to explore the innovation potential of combining virtual reality with the newly developed training curriculum for psychological first aid (PFA).

Advantageously, the PS Centre has been selected by the EU funded DRIVER+ project to further test the innovative training concept in a real-life crisis management trial in Austria in September 2019 under the EU civil protection exercise project Ironore2019.

The Innovation project was made possible by funds from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs – DANIDA. DRIVER+ has received funding from the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration under Grant Agreement (GA) N° #607798.

»The VR was particularly powerful in teaching the ‘LOOK’ principle. The participants had a common picture of the physical space. This made them freer to prioritize according to their own observations. Drawing on their own experiences, they noticed things in the scenario we hadn’t even considered, which added so much to the training.«

– Martha Bird, PFA trainer, PS Centre.

https://test.pscentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2019-01-30-10-29-11-FINAL-PFA-Scenario-1024×640.pnghttps://test.pscentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2019-01-30-10-24-30-FINAL-PFA-Scenario-1024×640.png