UnrealTriage: A Game-Based Simulation for Emergency Response

UnrealTriage is a simulation of a mass casualty incident built based on a modification of a commercial first person shooter game called Unreal Tournament. The simulation involves multiple emergency response players at the scene of a small airplane crash with 30 casualties. The player objectives developed thus far consist of fire suppression and primary triage. Players must locate and categorize the casualties into one of four treatment categories. The victims are tagged as red (immediate), yellow (urgent), green (delayed), or black (fatally wounded). For the game environment, a terrain model (map) based on a real-world airport was created from digital elevation data, satellite imagery, and local engineering data. The Karma physics engine, which is part of the Unreal distribution, was used to define object behaviors such as fire hose dynamics. Simple artificial intelligence (AI) for non-player characters was done through internal scripting, but more * This project was supported under Award No. 2000-DT-CX-K001 from the Office for Domestic Preparedness, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Points of view in this document are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official position of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. sophisticated behaviors may require interfacing with external AI engines.