Institute for Creative Technologies

Download a one sheet PDF overview of this project.

UrbanSim is a PC-based virtual training application for practicing the art of battle command in complex counterinsurgency and stability operations. UrbanSim consists of a game-based practice environment, a web-based multimedia primer on doctrinal concepts of counterinsurgency, and a suite of scenario authoring tools.

The UrbanSim practice environment allows trainees to take on the role of an Army battalion commander, and to plan and execute operations in the context of a difficult fictional training scenario. After developing their commander's intent, identifying their lines of effort and information requirements, and selecting their measures of effectiveness, trainees direct the actions of a battalion as they attempt to maintain stability, fight insurgency, reconstruct the civil infrastructure, and prepare for transition.

UrbanSim targets trainees' abilities to maintain situation awareness, anticipate second and third order effects of actions, and adapt their strategies in the face of difficult situations. UrbanSim is driven by an underlying socio-cultural behavior model, coupled with a novel story engine that interjects events and situations based on the real-world experience of former commanders. UrbanSim includes an intelligent tutoring system to provide guidance to trainees during execution, as well as after action review capabilities.

UrbanSim is being used and evaluated in an increasing number of U.S. Army training contexts, including in courses at the School for Command Preparation and the Command and General Staff College. UrbanSim has also been utilized within operational U.S. Army units to provide an opportunity for staff members to work together and improve their coordination skills.

The UrbanSim project is being performed under the ICT contract being managed by the United States Army Simulation and Training Technology Center (STTC).

This project differs from others in the following ways:

• 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 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 UrbanSim will.

Tags: cultural, culture, modeling, simulation, social, story, training

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