Demonstration of DEFACTO: training tool for incident commanders

In the wake of large-scale national and international terrorist incidents, it is critical to provide first responders and rescue personnel with tools and techniques that will enable them to evaluate response readiness and tactics, measure inter-agency coordination and improve training and decision making capability. We focus in particular on building tools for training and tactics evaluation for incident commanders, who are in charge of managing teams of fire fighters at critical incidents. Such tools would provide intelligent software agents that simulate first responder tactics. decisions, and behaviors in simulated urban areas and allow the incident commander (human) to interact. These agents form teams, where each agent simulates a fire engine, which plans and acts autonomously in a simulated environment. Through interactions with these software agents, an incident commander can evaluate tactics and realize the consequences of key decisions, while responding to such disasters.