Research
Overview
Calamityville offers a collaborative laboratory for researchers dedicated to investigating questions and issues surrounding medical readiness, while formulating and validating important solutions and discoveries in answering those difficult questions. The Calamityville site provides realistic disaster environments, with a consistent opportunity to observe and measure the activities of actual response personnel conducting real time patient care, and other response activities in a controlled, yet realistic, setting. We leverage Wright State University and partnerships within Wright-Patterson Air Force Base's Air Force Research Labs (AFRL)—specifically the 711th Human Performance Wing (HPW) and the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine (USAFSAM). We continue to build a relationship with the 711th HPW to assist the military in developing mechanisms to enhance the reality of training, as well as explore training through a variety of virtual environments.
Educational Partnership Agreement with AFRL/RH
The Continuous Learning Branch, 711th Human Performance Wing (711 HPW/RHWL), has had an onsite presence at Calamityville for approximately 10 years via an Educational Partnership Agreement, most recently renewed in 2016. At Calamityville, RHWL experiments with several different LVC technologies and tests training data collection methods in an operationally representative environment.
Recently, RHWL expanded its presence to accommodate the Performance Enabled Operational Training Environment (PEOTE) line of effort. PEOTE is transforming mission training through a focused application of LVC simulation technologies, individual and mission performance metrics, and exploitation of current and emerging data architectures. PEOTE seeks to optimize the use of LVC simulation components in varied training conditions in multiple domains with a focus on austere environments. As part of its research mission, PEOTE partners with the Gaming Research Integration for Learning Laboratory (GRILL) to apply emerging AR and VR technologies in live scenarios to determine the limits of these technologies, the boundary conditions that limit their effectiveness, and to frame future requirements for uses in training.
AFRL Sensors Directorate
PEOTE also collaborates with Sensors Directorate’s Sensing and Effects Analysis Branch (AFRL/RYAA) and their Cyber-Physical Sensing Sub CTC to create the Cyber-Physical Exploitation for Disaster and Emergency Response (CEDER) laboratory. A goal of CEDER is to exploit cyber-physical (“internet of things”) devices in non-traditional ways to better understand and characterize the environments (physical, cyber, electronic, etc.) in which these devices operate.
By capitalizing on advances in sensor exploitation via the CEDER collaboration, training environments can be much more efficiently and thoroughly described – vital to understanding the effect of training interventions on mission performance outcomes. The CEDER collaboration connects Calamityville and the Playas Training and Research Environment in New Mexico – a Secretary of the Air Force Concepts Development and Management Office (SAF/CDM) and AFRL research facility priority. This connection enables more advanced developmental tests of CEDER proofs of concept, tests of cloud computing and networking, and data.
