Work-in-Progress—Digital Human Factors Measurements in First Responder Virtual Reality-Based Skill Training

Abstract

First responders engage in highly stressful situations at the emergency site that may induce stress, fear, panic and a collapse of clear thinking. Staying cognitively under control under these circumstances is a necessary condition to avoid useless risk-taking and particularly to provide accurate situation reports to organize appropriate support in time. This work-in-progress applied a flexible virtual reality (VR) training environment to investigate the performance of reporting under rather realistically simulated mission conditions. In a pilot study, representative emergency forces of the Austrian volunteer fire brigade andnparamedics of the Johanniter organization participated in an exploratory pilot study that tested a formalized reporting schema (LEDVV), applying equivalent stress in both, (i) real (physical strain) and non-immersive (cognitive strain), and (ii) fully immersive training environments. Wearable psychophysiological measuring technology was applied to estimate the cognitive-emotional stress level under both training conditions. The results indicate that situation reports achieve a high level of cognitive-emotional stress and should be thoroughly trained. Furthermore, the results motivate the use of VR environments for the training of stress-resilient decision-making behavior of emergency forces.