NYC – The Office of Emergency Management today previewed its Advance Disaster Management Simulator, which is designed to help emergency personnel train to work together at the scene of disasters.

The simulator, which is located at a Bushwick warehouse, looks like a giant video game, with three wraparound monitors, but OEM Commissioner Joseph Bruno says it’s serious business.

“This allows us to look at the whole citywide incident management system in a realistic scenario and have them work together,” Bruno said. “These are the people who will be running emergencies and run them today in New York City. They run them under the existing system. This is a tool to let them get better at it.”

Scenarios featured on the $450,000 simulator include fires, explosions, and hazardous materials situations. The training sessions are a high-tech version of the full-scale field exercises that OEM stages from time to time. Those often involve thousands of personnel and can cost anywhere from $150,000 to $700,000.

“This is kind of a cost-effective way to run groups of people that can be incident commanders very quickly and cheaply,” said OEM Deputy Commissioner Jacob Cooper.

While the simulator currently uses generic backdrops, when it is in full operation, it will be customized to look just like New York City.

“It’s best that we can make things as realistic as possible, having equipment, locations that are real, New York City locations,” Cooper said. “This will only enrich the experience of the commanders that are here, the agencies that are working.”

Six city locales, as well as their emergency vehicles, are being built into the system. The simulator is expected to be in full use within the next six months.

(Source: NY1)