Introduction:

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is in charge of family tracing. Here, ICRC staff at work at the Stankovac 1 reception site in Brazde, Macedonia. © UNHCR/H.J. Davies

The ReliefSim project grew out of the activities of the international Forced Migration Online team that has been developing an internet portal over the past three years as a locus of information about forced migration, complex emergencies, and humanitarian assistance.

It soon became apparent to the Forced Migration Online team that, while a portal of information sources on forced migration and humanitarian assistance is of huge value, more targeted training materials for those who work in humanitarian emergencies are urgently needed. The training of aid workers who will be deployed in humanitarian crises is an area of intense activity for the plethora of agencies that operate in such environments. The turnover of staff is huge, and the training is costly and time-consuming. The ultimate goal of the ReliefSim project is to tackle these challenges by developing and implementing computer-based learning environments which incorporate simulations alongside a multimedia resource base of documents, images, time-based media and structured data. The ReliefSim tool will provide an immersive experience to give some feel to aid workers for the reality of the situations they are likely to face. It will also provide some complex problems that will take a great deal of thought and negotiation to analyse. Along with this it will provide some ‘no-win’ situations, problems to which there is no easy or right solution, because that is how humanitarian crises really are. There will also be the possibility of trainers customizing the tool to fit in with their own training environments—scenarios and data that can be added as needed.

Humanitarian communities are large and diverse, with many different organizations that often see each other as in competition rather than co-operating. However, consortia are emerging to set standards and agree upon goals prompted by mistakes that have been made in relief efforts in emergency settings that have had tragic consequences. These consortia are led by organizations such as Sphere, People-in-Aid, and Alertnet, and the good practices that they are establishing need to be widely promulgated: the ReliefSim tool is being produced to reflect the work being carried out in standards setting, and will grow and develop as the standards change.