The Human Element

We spend millions of dollars on new equipment and somewhat less on training our people who operate the equipment.  That is understandable.  The problem is that we spend even less on training Key Decision Makers, who, arguably, are extremely important during a disaster or incident.

Decision makers are responsible for the following:

• Planning
• Information Management
• Tracking and controlling resources
• Communicating
• Making decisions

Let's look at these roles in detail:

• Planning:  Who made the plan?  Do we even know if it works?  Will it work in the worst case scenario?  Is the plan accessible or even followed during a disaster or an event?
• Information Management:  How do decision makers get experience managing large quantities of information outside of a disaster?  Practice makes perfect, but how do you have realistic practice for something as dynamic as information management?
• Tracking and controlling resources:  Doing this during an actual event is much harder than during a tabletop exercise.  Also we bring people in to the EOC who are experts in a particular domain (police, fire, EMS, etc.) - what OTHER training is required to give them the expertise to employ and make decisions in other domains?  What about operating in an EOC environment?  The military has a one-year course to help officers transition to a Staff Officer role - what are we doing? Tabletop exercises allow us to "talk" about what we would do, rather than actually "doing" it.
• Communicating: One of the most prevalent problems is communication issues between the responders, the EOC and other agencies and departments.  How do we get better at this? Tabletop exercises don't really allow effective and realistic practice for communications and Live or Full Scale exercises are costly and can only be run infrequently.
• Making Decisions:  How do you give someone the confidence that they are making good decisions during a disaster or emergency?  They need practice, but realistic practice is very difficult outside of an actual event.

So herein lies the problem.  We have people in the EOC who play key roles, who have come from the field and may or may not have experience operating with other organizations.  The current training methods are wanting or very costly, and the decisions they are expected to make have a very large impact on the overall response.  

How do you solve this problem?

Luckily about 35 years ago, the military came up with a training methodology for key leaders that can be modified and brought over to the EM world.  

No, we don't have to train to be tank commanders or naval task force commanders.  This training methodology is called Constructive Simulation and it has the potential to greatly assist training key leaders and decision makers.  The military realized that it was hugely expensive to run large scale "functional" exercises to train leaders.  Even though everyone was in the field, these exercises also always had some limitations on training.  The other leader-focused training was Tabletop exercises.  Sound familiar?

Constructive simulation uses a computer to play the part of the "field" (Police, Fire, EMS, civilians, the disaster/emergency event, the buildings and terrain).  The EOC personnel interact with the on-scene personnel exactly how they would in real life - by telephone, radio, email, etc..   The on-scene personnel, instead of controlling ACTUAL resources in the field, control the resources in the computer.  They watch what is going on, report back to the EOC and implement any instructions.  From the viewpoint of the EOC, the training is nearly 100% realistic.  

Constructive simulation exercises cost much less to run (about as much or less than a Tabletop) but provide vastly improved training.  We ran a country-wide exercise in Jamaica last summer and they said that they learned much more during the two day Constructive Simulation exercise as they had during two previous functional exercises for which they paid $7M.

Constructive simulation bridges the gap between expensive functional exercises that can only be run infrequently and tabletop exercises, which are great as a walk-through, but are not realistic or extremely effective.

Emergency Response Plans for Oil and Gas

Image via Wikipedia

In the last blog, I discussed how constructive simulation might be used to improve the quality of safety briefings.  This time I am going to discuss Emergency Response Plans (ERPs) and how constructive simulation can potentially revolutionize how these are prepared and used.

First of all, let's discuss WHY the industry creates Emergency Response Plans.  "Because we have to" is probably the wrong response.  "Because it helps create the conditions for success, mitigate loss and improve response when something goes wrong" is probably closer to the correct answer.  So stepping back, we can see that there is a need to make the potential response "successful" and that we need to limit losses when something goes wrong - this is the root of "why".

But what has happened?  People get focused on the "wrong answer" and create a 1000 page tome that no one reads (or can read) that checks all the boxes but in the end achieves absolutely nothing.  The problems with a long, text-based Emergency Response Plan are:

  a. they are hard to understand;
  b. the information is not readily accessible in an emergency;
  c. information is scattered in different places;
  d. it is hard to get an overview of "what is supposed to happen" in an emergency;
  e. it is difficult to translate text into "action" when it comes time to practice or when the real event occurs

So the current state is that we have (possibly) fully compliant Emergency Response Plans that are (mostly) useless.  How can we fix the problem?

Anyone remember back before GIS systems such as ESRI existed?  There were thousands of drawings with information in various formats which were difficult to overlay and cross reference, difficult to share and difficult to understand.  Sound familiar?

The same way that GIS has transformed the way the geo-information is stored, Constructive Simulation has the ability to transform Emergency Response Plan information from STATIC, difficult to use and understand to a simple and DYNAMIC tool that can be re-used in dozens of ways.

Here is an example of how a Constructive Simulation could assist in the creation of an Emergency Response Plan:

1.  Emergency Response Plan creator gathers relevant data from the existing GIS system and loads these into the constructive simulation.  Much of this information can be automatically or semi-automatically loaded into the simulation and this would usually only need to be done one time for all the emergency response plans in the area.  Nothing new is required - this is the same information that is needed for the paper-based ERP, except that it is in digital format. The information loaded would include:

  a.  Oil and Gas infrastructure
  b.  Surrounding municipal infrastructure
  c.  Terrain information
  d.  Local response equipment locations and catalog
  e.  Distant/on-call response equipment locations and catalog

2.  Emergency Response Plan creator then plans out a number of disasters using the constructive simulation. For a pipeline or wide area infrastructure this could be breaks, fires or explosions in different sectors (wherever a different response is needed).  For fixed infrastructure such as a gas well, it might be varying wind directions to show the differences in response.  With a modern constructive simulation, each disaster should not take a long time to prepare and place within the simulation - maybe one or two hours per disaster location.

3.  Emergency Response Plan creator finally lays out the actual emergency response by giving orders to the simulated entities within the simulation (the ones loaded during step 1).  Of course the response is done in accordance with municipal and mutual aid agreements that are in place.  This is done for each "disaster" that was created in step 2.  Depending on the size, duration and danger, each of the responses can be created in a couple of hours (the start state is usually the same).  Usually each disaster and response are saved as a single scenario.

That's it! Once the Digital Emergency Response Plan is created in the constructive simulation, the electronic file can be shared with consultants and government agencies with the same ease that a GIS shape file can be shared.  What you have at this point is a terrific digital product that has the following advantages over its poor cousin, the paper-based ERP:

• Fewer chances for errors - the resources (simulation entities) are placed on a visual map.  It is easy to see if there is something missing or out of place
• Easier to Use - the product, once created, can be used in multiple ways without each user having to re-visualize and recreate the data.
• Time and Space - the real world is taken into account when running the simulated ERP.  A truck can't drive faster than a truck can drive, and the simulated truck burns gas the same way a real truck does.  It is far easier to spot planning shortfalls in a simulation that uses time and space as opposed to a paper plan.
• Reuse, reuse, reuse - plot the data once and re-use it for multiple purposes, multiple times (more on this in a minute)
• Faster and less effort to create the plan

REUSE, REDUCE, RECYCLE

As was stated above, once you have the data in the simulation format, you can use it for multiple purposes.  Here are some examples:

1. Internal company policies and procedures - visualize the problem using the simulation and work together to solve the issues with the ERP and wide-area/long-term response
2. Safety briefings (as discussed in the last blog)
3. Internal Training - run mini-exercises to provide better training than a briefing in about the same amount of time
4. Provide government agencies with an easy to understand ERP document that they can visualize and approve faster and easier.  If a picture tells a thousand words, a dynamic simulation must be worth a million words.  Of course some text-based information will always be required.
5. Conduct Town Hall Meetings with a tool that lets landowners see and understand the ERP and get a level of comfort that you know what you are doing. Also it will be easier for them to understand what they must do in an emergency
6. Yearly Training - using a simulation is much more effective and realistic than a tabletop exercise, and it costs much, much less than a live exercise.  Live exercises will always be required, but this provides better training in the interim for a lot lower cost.

In summary a Digital ERP can provide significant value to all parties. Government approval agencies can approve plans faster because they understand it better and don't need to wade through a miry document to get the information they need.  Companies can produce better ERPs faster than before and at a greatly reduced cost due to the data reuse and less waste generation of words that no-one reads.  Landowners benefit because they have an easier to understand ERP that can be shown and validated with a simple to use tool.  Finally the public benefits because they have a better system that takes advantage of the recent advances in simulation technology to produce better ERPs that are being properly approved, diligently tested and exercised and efficiently approved with less bureaucracy.  

I hope that this has generated some interest and discussion.  I will discuss the validation of Emergency Response Plans in my next blog.

Keep Training!

Bruce

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Constructive Simulation for the Oil and Gas Industry

Several people have asked about the application of constructive simulation for the Oil and Gas Industry.  As we have seen, safety and loss prevention are huge items that are at the top of everyone’s mind today, mainly due to the problems with BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  As previous blogs have discussed, constructive simulation has broad applicability to nearly any public safety scenarios – how can simulation be used as a tool for the Oil and Gas Industry?

Constructive Simulation is new to the Oil and Gas Industry.  Simulation and simulators of different types have been used for many years for a variety of uses, from production to reservoir visualization.  Constructive simulation is a different tool that has huge potential to change a number of facets of the energy industry, much the same as GIS technology has revolutionized how we record and present data.  Constructive Simulation brings a real-time, dynamic and visual tool into our tool bag that greatly improves the way we approach emergencies, safety and training.

Because we are talking about a new application of constructive simulation, let's review some of the basics.

What is Constructive Simulation?  Constructive simulation is a computer-based tool that allows one or more users to control a large number of “entities” within the simulation.  An entity can be a person, a vehicle or even a piece of equipment.  All of the entities interact within the simulation according to rules that are part of the simulation, itself.  Sounds complex?  Not really – once a scenario has been designed and built, much of this interaction is automatic and it occurs behind the scenes.  The people controlling the entities typically have simple on-screen menus to control their movement and interaction. 

I believe that Constructive Simulation could very successfully be applied in the following situations:

• Digital Safety Training Briefings
• Emergency Response Plan Preparation 
• Emergency Response Plan Validation
• Integration with Existing GIS Products
• Incident Command Training
• Replacement or augmentation of tabletop exercises

I will discuss each of these applications in turn, but for today, I will cover just the first one.

Digital Safety Training Briefings

The aim of a safety briefing is for people to understand their role during an emergency so that they will know what to do and instinctively do it.  If people have to understand what to do during a dynamic situation, why use static tools like a Word document or PowerPoint?  Let’s face it – people often have a hard time reading a static document and then applying what they learned in real-life.  Why not use a dynamic, visual tool that will show people in real-time what they are supposed to do? 

The airplane safety videos do a good job of showing a dynamic safety briefing – Constructive Simulation can do the same thing for the energy industry, except on a much larger scale and with a greater degree of complexity.   Imagine being able to conduct a safety briefing using a dynamic tool that allowed you to walk a group of trainees through a complex event with a simple-to-understand and visual tool.  Imagine being able to show the trainees what they needed to do – from any perspective, fully controllable in real-time.  All of this is possible with a good constructive simulation. Imagine being able to re-run the scenario quickly and easily, showing different possibilities and contingencies.

Why not extend the capabilities of the safety briefing?  You could create your own constructive simulation-based safety videos that can be placed on your web site that would be playable by anyone.  Workers could use these briefing videos to improve their safety knowledge before being assigned to a new area and the energy company could monitor access to ensure that employees watched the video as part of their safety indoctrination.

If you use your imagination you can quickly see that Constructive Simulation has the potential to greatly improve safety briefings - even to the point of holding a small simulation exercise at the end of the briefing to ensure that the employees (managing their own "entities") can confidently and successfully do what they are supposed to do in an emergency.  Imagine being able to play the safety briefing/exercise with any type of emergency and switch to new emergencies in a couple of minutes to give the trainees a realistic training indoctrination in multiple environments.  Imagine the knowledge that the employees could have by DOING instead of just reading or listening.

In the next blog I will tackle the subject of emergency response plans.

Keep training!

Bruce