Simulation and serious games in emergency management: Experiences from two case studies

Simulation and serious games (SSG) are often advocated as promising computer-based solutions supporting training and increasing the skills necessary to deal with new, complex and often unexpected situations. For emergency management (EM), there are organizations that already report unique benefits from utilizing SSGs, while others are waiting to find stronger evidence before procurement, or struggling with implementation and use. This paper focuses on potential users - those who have SSGs in their environment but are not using them. The aim is to determine how known benefits and limitations of SSGs influence these non-users, and their experience with encountering SSGs. To investigate these questions, qualitative data were collected via observations and interviews from two case-studies. The first is a large experimental study focusing on inter-organizational collaboration with the help of many technologies, including SSGs. The second examines the possibilities of SSGs based on real-life cases. The findings show that to understand the value of SSGs requires a better connection to real-life emergency cases. Methodologies to integrate SSGs into daily training settings, with clear implication for real-life cases, would also be necessary. The lessons illustrate current challenges to building more useful SSG scenarios.