University of Southern California

ELECT UrbanSim

ELECT UrbanSim is a PC-based, story-driven, virtual training application to better prepare leaders for exercising command in a complex operational environment, including representative behaviors and cultural effects. While some training applications model the human terrain to some extent, none has focused on this to the degree that ELECT UrbanSim will. Like ELECT BiLat, ELECT UrbanSim is part of the Enhanced Learning Environments with Creative Technologies (ELECT) suite of portable training programs designed to develop real-world skills.

Whereas BiLAT teaches skills for conducting meetings and negotiations at the interpersonal level, UrbanSim teaches commanders how to manage operations on a city-wide scale. The UrbanSim player takes on the role of a Battalion or Brigade commander who is attempting to maintain stability, fight insurgency and crime, reconstruct the civic infrastructure and prepare for transition in a densely populated urban environment with multiple social and cultural groups as well as key individuals. Students develop and update their situational understanding, anticipate the potential 2nd and 3rd order effects of their orders and direct action to develop, break and exploit connections among key factors of the situation to achieve their mission.

The UrbanSim development effort is following the lead of BiLAT in also seeking to include an intelligent tutoring system and a suite of authoring tools. The intelligent tutoring system is intended to allow UrbanSim to still provide a valuable pedagogical experience. The authoring tools will allow instructors and their local training support staff to modify the scenarios provided with UrbanSim and create new scenarios. The goal of the ELECT UrbanSim authoring tools will be to automate the technical aspects of scenario authoring allowing an authoring with only domain and instructional expertise to create new game content. By combining simulation with story-driven experiences, ELECT UrbanSim will give the warfighter an opportunity to not only hear lessons learned as they come in from the field but experience those lessons learned in an immersive, engaging training environment. This effort is being performed under the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) contract being managed by the United States Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) Simulation and Training Technology Center (STTC).

This project differs from others in the following ways:

  • ELECT UrbanSim will explore a number of innovations not previously seen in either entertainment or serious games. First, UrbanSim will mix two forms of simulation with story-driven content. The first simulation component, a behavior engine, will determine the actions and reactions of non-player character (NPC) individuals and groups based on the social and physical game environment, their underlying goals, and cultural influences. The second simulation component, the story engine, will cause the game environment to change based on human authored "story nets." Story nets represent a series of events, NPC actions and player actions that are designed to communicate a specific story to the player over a sequence of turns. Story nets will be based on actual "lived experiences" giving the UrbanSim player the benefit of real life experience without the risk. This approach will combine the flexibility and general applicability of simulation with carefully designed stories that are the result of real life lessons learned and instructional design.

  • A second innovative aspect of ELECT UrbanSim will be the deep social simulation built into the training applications including models of population and culture groups (tribes, religious groups, criminal gangs, neighborhoods...), key individuals, social networks, and links between the human terrain and the physical terrain. Thus UrbanSim, including the underlying simulation and stories, will model each important group, one or more leaders for each group, the relationships between the group and the leader(s), the relationships between the leaders and between groups, as well as the links between groups and the physical terrain (this neighborhood depends on this power station for electricity, this religious group considers this Mosque an important holy site, this tribe depends on this farmland for their economic well being...). While some games and military training applications model the human terrain to some extent, no application has focused on this aspect of simulation to the degree that ELECT UrbanSim will.

Tags: culture, operations, terrain, tutoring, urban

View All Projects »

Goals

  • Allow Battalion and Brigade commanders to practice developing and maintaining situational understanding and directing operations in a complex, contemporary operational environment.
  • As part of the LAST ATO, contribute to the development of new tools, metrics, and methods that enable training developers to rapidly create effective, interactive, virtual training simulations.
  • Provide a "sandbox" environment to facilitate ICT research in the areas of social simulation, story representation and management and intelligent tutoring.