XVR Helps Fire Departments Across Canada Prepare for Forest Fires

You, and your team, are on the front-lines of fire prevention. You know our communities are not helpless against wildfire threat and are working tirelessly to mitigate risk. One of the best tools you have in ensuring wildfire readiness is preparation and training – this is where XVR and FutureShield can help.

XVR is a 3D simulation tool that provides emergency response teams with an immersive learning environment to educate, train and assess emergency responders. Constantly being updated, based on changing conditions and feedback from the community of users, the team is proud of the wide-ranging functionalities built into XVR On Scene for creating scenarios. One of the most relevant features are those related to wildfires including fire path, burn and extinguish footprints and burnable environments (vegetation).

I spoke with Emiel Stevens, XVR Simulations’ Account Manager for North America to get more information on this exciting feature.  I caught up with him virtually from his office near Amsterdam, NL.

Why do you feel this feature is so important to the Canadian market?

• Our training system is built to reflect the reality first responders face, and wildfires are a real threat in many Canadian communities.  Here at XVR we want our training system to prepare incident commanders and firefighters for real life situations so we implemented the wildfire feature as a free add-on to help first responders in Canada and around the world prepare for wildfire season with the best possible training.

Can you describe how the training works and how it would help local fire departments?

• The wildfire functionality built into XVR On Scene allows users to create scenarios centered around wildfires. This feature allows the trainer to create a virtual fire path in a 3D environment and then during the training exercise the virtual pod will replicate the burning down of the vegetation and work with trainees on tactics to help mitigate the risk. The trainees can use different tactics to contain the fire and will see the impact of their orders such as bombing water, dosing the pods, extinguish fires depending on their response the fire will be contained or spread real-time.

What type of feedback have you gotten from fire departments around the inclusion of these features?

• We have been fortunate to get a lot of positive feedback from our community.  We have some Australian users who have been actively using this functionality and their feedback has really helped us refine the product to reflect the realities firefighters on the front lines are facing. As more and more Canadian users are coming on-board we are looking forward to their feedback which will help us continue to refine the product and make it even more effective for the Canadian market.

Any future updates or hints of what else you and the team are working on that you can share?

• One of the exciting things we are working on is bigger environments, we are excited that we will be able to create 10km wide environments shortly.  The team at XVR are also actively working to improve the quality of the vegetation. We want to add more varieties and make it more realistic. We are also constantly developing localized content for Canada such as fire trucks and other ways to make the product more immersive. FutureShield and our Canadian training partner, DriveWise, have been great partners in bringing forward Canadian specific ideas as they work with local fire departments and we look forward to this partnership continuing.

Contact FutureShield at [email protected] or 1-866-675-7835 for more information XVR Simulation and how and how to get started with one of the most innovative training programs available for Canadian first responders.