Crisis Management and Disaster Response

Fires, floods and dangerous chemical releases: these are just a few kinds of incidents that NATO’s Crisis Management and Disaster Response Centre of Excellence (CMDR CoE) helps train leaders on how to plan and manage their responses.

Previously using VBS3 for their crisis management and response education and training, CMDR CoE upgraded to BISim’s VBS4 at the end of 2020.

Located in Sofia, the Republic of Bulgaria, CMDR CoE provides research and analysis, tailored education and training for senior experts (at the strategic/operational level), support to concept development and experimentation, doctrine and standardisation, and lessons learned. CMDR CoE has a fully equipped operational laboratory with significant testing and validation capacity. CMDR CoE uses VBS4 in combination with constructive simulations.

Following market research and verification in its laboratory, Col. Orlin Nikolov, the director of CMDR CoE, noted several advantages of upgrading from VBS3 to VBS4.

With VBS4, “there are no restrictions for creation of scenarios in terms of terrains,” says Col. Nikolov. “VBS4 has elevation and vector data for the whole Earth implemented in a geo server. This includes roads, buildings, forests, and water. We can also refine the existing data, including adding high resolution earth imagery, according to our training needs.”

Another significant advantage of VBS4 for CMDR CoE, according to Col. Nikolov, is its “very well-integrated artificial intelligence.”

“VBS4 allows the control of the AI behavior of many various units to be executed by just one person,” he says. “With proper planning and sufficient awareness of the system, many events of different scales can be reproduced and analyzed.” For example, CMDR CoE uses VBS4 AI behaviors and the built-in AI navigation mesh to simulate crowds of civilians participating in protests.

VBS4 has already been used for a variety of training and simulation purposes by CMDR CoE. One of VBS4’s first uses for NATO was to visualize and assess the consequences of an industrial accident involving simulation of a release of a dangerous gas.

VBS4 has also been incorporated into the CoE’s “Crisis Management and Disaster Response Exercise Planners” and “Strategic Decision Making for Crisis Response Operations” training courses to enable trainees to track the results of decisions in real time.

“CMDR CoE relies very much on VBS4’s development and its new features in the area of crisis response and management,” Nikolov says.

These characteristics of VBS4 will be tested during the upcoming tactical crisis management exercise in May 2021 organized by the municipality of Belene. The VBS4 results derived during the exercise will be implemented and visualized in the integrated technical architecture (Integrated Development Environment - IDE), created by the Center, in constructive simulation and the command-and-control system.

Find out about upcoming training opportunities with CMDR CoE by visiting https://www.cmdrcoe.org/.