Risk Management Using Agent-Based Virtual Environments

Risk Management Using Agent-Based Virtual Environments (2005-2007)

ARC Discovery Grant

Investigators: D. Richards, M. Kavakli, M.Dras

The main aim of this research is to develop techniques in the areas of knowledge acquisition, cognitive modelling and language generation to enable building training simulations that will assist the transfer of tacit knowledge in the area of risk management. Development of risk-related scenarios commenced early in the project. To focus more on risk associated with crime and particularly terrorism, we moved to scenarios involving airports and customs officers in particular.

We have developed a module known as "Risk Management Module" which allows the trainee to explore various customs scenarios within a virtual environment. Since the equipment and skill required in developing a Virtual Reality environment is very costly, we have begun our work using a game engine, that allows easier programming and manipulation to test out our approach.

One evaluation study has looked at the value of using a game environment for training. Another study will be performed in the first half of 2006 to test for the role of interactivity in training and learning. Ethics approval has been received and a pilot study conducted to date.

Two students, Mary Gardiner and Eric Fassbender, started a PhD in Feb 2006 working on topics closely related to this project. Mary has been awarded an APA and receives a top-up of 9K from this grant. Eric is self-funded as an overseas student, but will perform research assistant work paid from this grant.

I supervised 3 research assistants produced work relevant to this grant: Tom Fellmann (Virtual Reality Engine), Iwan Kartiko (3D Modelling and Animation of Agents in Softimage), an Jason Barles (Unreal Tournament Game Engineering). 11 publications were produced.