Sectors · Emergency Preparedness & Response
Rehearse the storm before it comes, as often as it takes.
A crisis drill in 3D for parish leaders, emergency managers and responders, at their own site, with nothing at risk.
What you get
- Start with the plan that worries you mostThe drill is built around the emergency your team most needs to rehearse.
- Comes to a local hostA local partner opens its lot to the truck for the day. No one travels to a training center.
- One shared pictureThe whole command team sees the same 3D scene at the same time, the way it will on the real day.
- Leaders and responders train togetherPractice the hand-offs between agencies, not just your own piece.
- Run it againA mistake in the room costs nothing. The group runs the scene again, harder or different.
Deep Dive
For grant officers and engineers.
SP-02 · Crisis management and emergency preparednessHow a drill works
Steps
- A parish, agency or company names the emergency it most needs to rehearse and the decision that is hardest to get right.
- The truck comes to a local host. Participants put shoe covers over their shoes and put on 3D glasses.
- The team makes its calls (where to send crews, when to close a road, how to move people) and the scene responds.
- A guide replays the key moment and asks why. Findings are shared back with partners first.
Who it serves
- Parish government and emergency management
- Fire, police and EMS
- Industrial plants, utilities and ports
- Hospitals and health systems
- Residents and community groups
XR Jags projectICLERT: the program behind it
What it is
The Southern University Graduate School, with the Louisiana Department of Health and emergency preparedness leaders, built an immersive VR disaster training program for crisis managers, first responders and stakeholders: hurricanes, electrical hazards and gas leaks.
Reported outcomes (from the student team)
- 35+ emergency managers, police and risk officers trained through immersive VR/AR disaster simulations.
- 10+ ready-to-deploy training modules for Meta Quest 3 headsets and CAVE systems.
- Deployment-ready VR/AR modules packaged and transferred to the Louisiana Department of Health.
For grant officersWhat the research says
Evidence cited in the deep dive
- A 2024 scoping review of 55 studies (SAGE Open Medicine) concluded VR exercises are more effective than tabletop exercises in planning for disaster preparedness training.
- In one study in that review, VR cost about $327.78 per trainee at first and about $115.43 after three years of reuse, while a live drill stayed at about $229.79.
Louisiana need cited in the deep dive
- Louisiana has had 17 federal disaster declarations in five years, five of them hurricanes (USAFacts).
- Fifty of Louisiana's 64 parishes are at least 92% rural.
TechnicalFor engineers: the campus digital twin
Build (from the ICLERT write-up)
- A LiDAR- and geospatial-powered digital twin of the Southern University campus, including the University Dome (emergency shelter) and the Emergency Operations Center.
- Hurricane management VR modules for multi-incident, real-time decision-making.
- 3 foundational courses, 7 hazard-specific modules and 2 integrated simulations.
- Program files, source code and technical documentation packaged for replication.
Sources: the AM Lab deep dive “Crisis management and emergency preparedness”, the suvrjags.org ICLERT write-up and Immersion in Motion sub-projects.