Enriching firefighter training through the development of a novel virtual reality training simulation for personalized, precision skill and resilience training

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A highly innovative project using virtual reality to simulate uncontrolled fire scenarios and improve training for firefighters using immersive life-like, experiential learning. This technology would elicit physiological and psychological responses similar to the human reactions of a real fire scenario with the major difference being that there is much less risk of injury. Currently, the cost of training in real fire scenarios is extremely high requiring significant resources at great personal risk. Injuries on the fire ground are very costly, disruptive to workflow, and negatively impacts fire fighters lives in multiple ways. Many fire fighters who are unable to train in real-life scenarios, due to the uncontrollable conditions, suffer from a variety of natural but adverse reactions when they are exposed to the real thing. The fundamental premise of the proposal is that firefighters will be better equipped through training in an immersive environment as they will learn to manage the stressors in real-life and find ways to optimize performance and well-being, enabling them to perform better at their jobs. Ultimately, this means saved lives, reduced number of injuries, and less incidences of Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). The social impact of this project is essentially three fold: 1) reduced injury and the associated costs (i.e. paid leave, insurance claims, disability payments, income loss for the firefighter and family) and negative impacts (i.e. loss of productivity, depression and isolation, healthcare system costs); 2) reduced incidence of death on the job for firefighters, the associated costs (i.e. turnover and life insurance claims); and 3) increased success of firefighters on the job through lower training costs compared to the average cost of injury (i.e. less training injuries, no need for emergency and stand-by medical team in training environments, no cost of rebuilding training environment each time it is burned down, and in many cases fire fighters receive training rather than receiving no real-life training at all).