News

Video games that aid national security

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

(8/27/07) -- Scientists working on national security are developing a new generation of video games, ones they believe will train emergency personnel faster than existing methods. A video game enthusiast is leading the project.

It's a normal day in Anytown, USA, until the unexpected occurs.

A collision with a tanker creates a chlorine gas cloud. Now it's your call how to deploy emergency personnel and to order evacuations.

Computer Scientist Donna Djordjevich believes a computer game is the ideal technology to train first responders.

"Even now, there are still skeptics, but I think a lot of people are converting into this mindset," said Djordjevich.

One year and $600,000 has gone into the project so far.

The game borrows all the adrenalin-pumping qualities of video games. It tracks your time and the number of injuries and deaths resulting from your plan of attack. But the score isn't as important as learning from your mistakes.

"It is a sandbox. They're able to play through it and say, well, that idea obviously didn't work out, but I'd rather have them make the mistake in the video game than in reality," said Djordjevich.

The disaster video game is a full-time project for Djordjevich at Sandia National Labs. Graduate students at the University of Southern California have been focusing on the high-level graphics.

Djordjevich has been playing video games since she was six. She says no one will take this exercise seriously if it doesn't match what you'd see on a Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft game console.

"I think it's very important to at least get to a certain level of production quality or private industry quality graphics so that way people don't just turn away from it immediately and just dismiss it as old technology, old software. You have to stay relevant," said Djordjevich.

Learning the keyboard and mouse commands may be challenging at first, but the game may be more interesting than sitting through a traditional lecture.

At the end of the three-year development program, the future of "Ground Truth" could lie in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security which may secure the rights to it in order to train people across the country, or it could even possibly become a commercially available game.

Get more News »