EOS & ENERGIETRANSITIE VR TRAINING

The Haaglanden, Midden-West Brabant, Gelderland-Zuid and the Netherlands Institute for Public Safety (NIPV) jointly developed a virtual reality simulation for the Fire Brigade to practice with fires with Energy Storage Systems. Participants in this Virtual Reality project: safety regions Haaglanden, Central and West Brabant, NIPV and Playmax Group (the supplier), Gelderland-South.

Also within the Fire Service, Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly being used for training firefighters. High-risk situations can be safely practiced in digital training environments. The Haaglanden, Midden-West Brabant, Gelderland-South and NIPV safety regions jointly developed a VR simulation for the fire service to practice with fires with Energy Storage Systems.

The Central West Brabant safety region previously developed a VR tool to allow firefighters to practice with fires with solar panels and small batteries.

Multiple scenario’s were created in order to cover as much of the high-risk situations as possible. The detail in the environment is pushed to the max within the capabilities of the standalone Quest 2.

Every scene had optimized animations for fire and smoke. Lot’s of testing and referencing with actual firefighters had to be done to replicate realistic looking fire and smoke in virtual reality.

Due to the expansion with neighborhood batteries, it is now also possible to practice firefighting operations at larger Energy Storage Systems (EOS).

This subject is ideally suited for virtual practice, because the number of neighborhood batteries and therefore the possibility of physical practice are still limited.

In addition, it offers a good platform to test the procedures developed for incident control at EOS in practice. NIPV provided knowledge and expertise on both the content of the simulation (what does an EOS look like, how does the fire service act) as well as the process of purchasing the VR resources and scenario development.