MACSIM ®

The major incident or disaster is neither a place for training nor for development and evaluation of methodology. Knowledge and skills required for this have to be learned by interactive training, "learning by doing", which can be done either by field exercises or by the use of simulation models. Field models with live figurants providing sufficient data for accurate evaluation of methodology or performance are very resource consuming and expensive. The remaining alternative is simulation systems which have the advantage that the whole chain of response (scene, transport, hospitals, command and communication) can be trained/evaluated simultaneously, giving the overall result (outcome) of the response. This makes it possible also to train and evaluate the important coordination between the different components of this chain, which by experience is one of the most critical parts of the response where failure is a frequent reason for non-optimal outcome.

To achieve this in a field exercise would mean multiplication of the costs; in most places it would not even be possible because the hospital response cannot be trained "live" without significant disturbances of routine medical care. Thus, there is a clear need of simulation models both for development and evaluation of methodology and for education and training.