A new high-tech training program for Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) personnel involves the use of virtual reality, augmented reality and 360-video.
Minister for Fire and Emergency Services, Craig Crawford said the extended reality offered benefits traditional training approaches were unable to match.
“Apart from being cost-effective, this technology helps us to bridge distances to more readily educate and train staff and volunteers, particularly those in regional or remote areas,” Mr Crawford said.
“This means, for example, we can have one of our leading firefighting instructors at the School of Fire and Emergency Services in Brisbane delivering an incident response program through virtual reality headsets to crews in classrooms at locations anywhere in the State.”
He said that in this environment, the instructor could highlight key incident details and response techniques and provide real-time coaching to ensure best results in the field when it came to crews responding to actual incidents.
To develop the digital training programs, QFES teamed up with the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and Deakin University.
QFES Commissioner Greg Leach said the program would continue its rapid progress over coming months.
“We have, in the past few days, rolled out 360-degree video training to an intake of new firefighter recruits, which is an Australian-first as far as we are aware,” Commissioner Leach said.
“This ensures the recruits have a good base of knowledge and skills they can draw on when they progress to live-fire environments and it reduces some of the risks and costs involved in the early stages of their development.”
He said another area of training was focused on firefighting aircraft, which was an important addition to modern bushfire response techniques and a growing part of operations.
“Additionally, we have been developing programs around storm and severe weather event response with a view of using these to assist with not only training but also community education,” Commissioner Leach said.
