Games to simulate response to disasters

BANGALORE: In an attempt to effectively respond to disasters, The Centre for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP), along with the government, is developing simulations and games to combat urban disasters.While memories of the Carlton Towers disaster are still fresh, delays in response from various agencies to disasters have led some experts in the field to see the incident in retrospection and come up with solutions to deal with them in a better manner. “The Government of India set up a National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) after the Tsunami in 2004,” said Harsha, coordinator of the Emergency and Disaster Management project, which was initiated two years ago.Speaking to Express, he said that the incident had raised questions on who reacts and how to such situations. “This incident made the government realise that they should have  a proactive response”, he observed.On the advantage of games in combating disasters, he said that they would create controlled environment and people will be put in similar situations to study their reactions when in it.“We also indulge in Triage activities,” Bharath, another member of the project, said. Triage is an exercise to ensure that victims are identified and tagged with a colour according to the degree of injury to optimally use existing resources such as ambulances and doctors.According to the new suggestions, Indian disaster management authorities have employed ‘Incident Command System’ (ICS) on the lines of the Californian model, he said.According to this, an Incident Commander (IC) would be present at the site of the tragedy while a Commanding Officer (CO) would oversee the entire process.The team would use existing data of traffic cameras and other information to simulate incidents and then let various agencies effectively work in coordination.“There are existing protocols, but many of them are not implemented at the ground level,” Bharath informed. Stating that technology would be used as a facilitator, both Harsha and Bharath said that it would not be a solution but should suit their needs.With their super computing abilities, the team will simulate situations and games to see how people would react in certain situations. “The aim is to create a living lab for people and to prepare them psychologically when unnatural situations arise,” Harsha said.