The buzz in security right now is about what AI can do to help keep buildings safe. There is good reason for the excitement. AI can help security teams identify threats automatically and monitor more areas than ever before. But when emergencies actually happen, humans have to step in. Every security expert will tell you that no matter how good your security system is, in an emergency a team’s performance comes down to how well they have been trained for the situation. That raises an important question for security teams: what is the best way to keep staff trained for a wide range of possible emergencies?
Other industries have already found a useful answer to this question: VR training simulations. Electrical utility operators have started using VR training to help employees learn what to do when problems occur at a substation. “We’re trying to think about how to do training differently to make it more repeatable and available when our people have availability,” said Elizabeth O’Connor, vice president at the utility company Exelon. VR has emerged as one of the best and safest ways to train utility staff because of the inherently dangerous nature of the job. Even standing in the wrong place can be deadly when something goes wrong at a substation, so checklists and instruction manuals are not enough to ensure employees follow protocols exactly.
Hospitality companies have also found a good use for VR training. They have been using it as an effective way to train staff without disrupting guests who might not want to see an emergency simulation during their family vacation. VR training programs also provide much better feedback than traditional training programs. VR can track the path someone takes through the building, how long it takes them to decide on a direction, and if they remembered to inform others. The feedback on these actions can be presented to the trainee in real time, helping build stronger instincts for if and when emergencies actually do occur.
One of the reasons for the growth in VR training is what studies have been showing about how well it works when it comes to memory retention. There is evidence that those who learn with VR training learn four times faster than learning the same information in a classroom and that trainees are 275% more confident to apply skills learned after training. Some of this has to do with how emotionally connected people are with a virtual environment. VR learners report feeling over three times more emotionally connected to the curriculum than learning it in a classroom. It can be hard to instill the importance of retaining important details to trainees when they know that most of the scenarios will probably never happen. But when they are forced to see how dangerous and scary it can actually be if those scenarios occur.
The way virtual reality is able to teach new skills is why we are starting to see VR training expand beyond just emergency scenarios. Walmart, for example, has planned to send VR headsets to each of its stores—nearly 20,000 units in total—to help train its staff on how to use new technology, build soft skills, and meet compliance requirements. Walmart’s efforts came after they noticed that employee test scores increased by 10 to 15 percent when they started using VR as part of their training programs.
AI might have overshadowed VR when it comes to increasing building safety, but that does not mean the two cannot work together. The Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M has developed a multiplayer game to help oil and gas pipeline operators train for emergencies. The game uses AI to create different scenarios based on how participants performed in previous sessions, keeping them on their toes. “This opens new dimensions of what they don’t want to see and lets them anticipate, control, and mitigate newly evolving hazards and lets them understand scenarios rarely seen but that may occur,” said Faisal Khan, the center’s director.
Consumer adoption of VR has been slower than most tech companies expected. While people may not want to watch movies or send emails in virtual reality, companies are finding the technology invaluable as a teaching tool. Building operators might not have fully realized how useful VR could be for emergency preparedness, but it seems almost inevitable that they eventually will. Preparing for an emergency might not be at the top of every building manager’s to-do list, but when things go wrong, emergency training quickly becomes a priority. When it comes to training, the more realistic the better, and few methods create realism as effectively as virtual reality.
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