The ReliefSim concept

Humanitarian emergencies are happening all over the world, all of the time, and there are many organizations, large and small, that are called upon to provide assistance in such emergencies. These can be governments, inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations, faith-based agencies, charities, and even commercial companies. One of the pressing concerns for all involved in the world of humanitarian assistance is the training and retention of key staff, and their professionalization. In the past, much of the assistance was provided by volunteers who sometimes had little or no previous experience, and consequently mistakes, sometimes tragic mistakes, were made. There is now a more professional career structure for aid workers, but the need for and costs of training are overwhelming, and agencies are struggling to provide this.

It is against this background that the international Forced Migration Online team, particularly those at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre of Queen Elizabeth House, and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, New York, began to envisage the possibility of developing a sophisticated computer-based simulation tool, ReliefSim. These partners, together with the University of Oxford’s Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning (TALL), and Oxford ArchDigital (OAD) have begun to develop a unique training tool designed to create a believable representation of the environment in which aid workers may find themselves. This tool will allow aid workers to test their abilities and experiment with techniques in a realistic, but not real, environment, and will encourage them to develop skills in solving complex and interrelated problems.