Advancing Smart Immersive Technologies for Humanitarian Preparedness and Emergency Response

Executive Summary

XRisis provides three inclusive, engaging, and easily repeatable simulated virtual crisis environment pilots for collaborative emergency and crisis management training and upskilling. The three exemplary crisis management pilots are built on CORTEX2 platform services, providing evidence-based validation that real-time XR communications environments can improve collaborative learning experiences, increase adoption, reduce costs, increase training delivery efficiencies, and decrease logistical complexities. With XRisis, the CORTEX2 consortium created a project specifically addressing serious gaps in humanitarian aid worker training where traditional approaches are limited by high costs, restricted accessibility, and lack of realism, especially for local actors with fewer resources.

Humanitarian Training Challenges

In humanitarian crises, there is no time for trial and error, making intensive preparation and realistic training critically important. Conventional humanitarian training faces multiple constraints: simulation exercises require significant financial resources for venues, facilitator travel, and participant accommodation, often exceeding tens of thousands of euros for single workshops serving fewer than twenty participants. Logistical complexities multiply when training involves geographically distributed teams across multiple countries, requiring coordination of schedules, visa arrangements, and travel logistics that can delay critical upskilling by months. Realism suffers because physical simulations cannot replicate full crisis environment complexity, psychological pressure of decision-making under extreme conditions, or coordination challenges of managing distributed response teams across unstable communication infrastructure.

Action Contre la Faim's Emergency Readiness and Response Unit identified these limitations as barriers to achieving strategic goals of ensuring 80% of country offices maintain up-to-date Emergency Preparedness and Response Plans. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated both the necessity of remote collaboration capabilities and the inadequacy of existing videoconferencing solutions for complex collaborative tasks requiring spatial awareness and multi-stakeholder coordination. Local staff in resource-constrained contexts face particular disadvantages, lacking access to intensive face-to-face training opportunities available to headquarters personnel whilst bearing primary responsibility for implementing emergency responses in their communities.

ImmErgenSim Platform Solution

To overcome these bottlenecks, Nuwa and Action Contre la Faim developed ImmErgenSim: an immersive simulation platform featuring low-threshold, interactive training formats that run on desktop computers or VR headsets, recreating real-life emergencies in virtual environments. The platform integrates CORTEX2 enabling technologies to provide: secure real-time communication via Rainbow CPaaS from Alcatel Lucent Enterprise, avatar-based presence through DFKI's Video Call Alternative Appearance system, AI-powered dialogue characters using CEA's Conversational Virtual Agent platform, and automatic documentation via Linagora's summarisation agent.

The technology enables emergency responders to train for critical scenarios in immersive XR environments safely, repeatably, and flexibly, without geographic constraints or physical danger. Training scenarios address complete emergency management cycle including preparation activities, alert and initial assessment phases, response strategy development, implementation challenges, and after-action review, though validation evidence demonstrates implementation phase simulation delivers highest training value whilst theoretical knowledge transfer shows limited incremental benefit from immersive delivery.

Value Proposition and Impact

XRisis provides adaptable and diverse learning environments, enables remote collaboration reducing travel requirements, delivers cost reduction compared to conventional in-person exercises, supports multi-language internationalisation, and creates safe online environments for immersive learning without real-world consequences. The online platform limits the need for trainers and learners to travel to remote locations whilst immersive experiences enable AI-driven measurement of acquired learning and competency development. Scenario reusability transforms training economics: once designed, simulations deploy repeatedly across multiple cohorts with marginal costs approaching zero, fundamentally changing cost-benefit calculations for intensive preparedness training.

Market positioning targets CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs from global humanitarian emergency and response NGOs as primary decision-makers, with revenue models combining tiered organisational account subscriptions, custom scenario design professional services, marketplace commissions, and Service Level Agreements for ongoing platform maintenance and content updates. The platform has achieved Unity for Humanity Grant recognition for addressing global challenges aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals, validating both technical innovation and social impact potential.

CORTEX2 Technology Integration

XRisis exploits four CORTEX2 enabling technologies validated through operational deployment. Rainbow CPaaS provides real-time secure communication platform for voice and video connections used extensively across all three pilots, integrated through C# SDK enabling native Unity application support. DFKI's Video Call Alternative Appearance avatarisation system helps facilitators and trainees preserve presence and identity during training sessions whilst protecting privacy and enabling appearance customisation. CEA's CoVA serves as AI-based virtual dialogue partner integrated with Rainbow, helping simulation facilitators and participants during exercises by recalling core documentation and conversation details whilst engaging in contextually appropriate dialogue reflecting character roles and personalities. Linagora's summarisation agent generates automatic call summaries from voice recordings for follow-up analysis and evidence-based debrief conversations, reducing facilitator documentation burden whilst improving learning consolidation quality.

Infrastructure runs on European-owned cloud service providers in Germany and France, ensuring data sovereignty and GDPR compliance essential for humanitarian sector deployment. A Unity server coordinates multi-player engine for all endpoint experiences (XR HMDs and laptops), whilst WebSocket server coordinates object distribution between endpoints in simulation environments. End-point applications include XR device Unity multi-user application, desktop Unity multi-user application, and web application for simulation coordination and inject management serving as front-end for WebSocket server coordination.

Validation Evidence and Outcomes

The proof-of-concept achieved Technology Readiness Level 7 through validation with eight Action Contre la Faim emergency roster participants in Paris on 14 May 2025. Quantitative results demonstrated 59% System Usability Scale score, 70% overall added value rating, and 66% user satisfaction, with significant differentiation across components ranging from 3.2 out of 5 for theoretical briefing to 4.2 out of 5 for soft skills practice. Qualitative feedback identified implementation simulation as most valuable for developing negotiation capabilities, decision-making under pressure, and cultural sensitivity through realistic stakeholder interactions that conventional training cannot easily replicate.

Key recommendations from validation include: shift from evaluating whether technology works to examining whether it fulfils defined user group needs in specific training contexts; maintain focus on application of one cluster of technologies to high-quality user experience rather than spreading resources across all emergency cycle phases; streamline user interface and experience to remove unnecessary distractions with thorough induction integral to user journey; and design future simulations allowing use of both laptops and VR headsets to accommodate budget and logistical constraints.

Future Development and Exploitation

Post-validation discussions between Nuwa and Action Contre la Faim led to agreement for continued development toward commercial SimExBuilder platform with Service Level Agreement model targeting Q2 2026 launch. The low-code simulation builder enables NGOs worldwide to design their own immersive training simulations without extensive technical expertise, with potential extending beyond humanitarian operations to safety training in industry and utilities, triage drills in healthcare, story-based learning in education, and scenario planning for smart cities.

Competitive advantages derive from humanitarian domain expertise providing first-to-market positioning, comprehensive validation evidence from rigorous third-party evaluation, and dual desktop-VR support enabling deployment flexibility matching organisational constraints. The platform specifically addresses gaps in local actor training where traditional approaches prove prohibitively expensive and logistically impractical, supporting humanitarian sector localisation commitments to strengthen in-country capacity and leadership.

Conclusion

XRisis demonstrates that smart immersive technologies can transform humanitarian emergency preparedness training when applied selectively to high-value applications, particularly implementation phase soft skills development, whilst acknowledging that theoretical knowledge transfer remains better served by conventional digital modalities. The successful CORTEX2 technology integration validates EU research investment in advancing cooperative real-time XR capabilities whilst demonstrating pathway from research demonstration through validation to commercial platform development delivering sustained social impact. Future work will focus on interface refinement, multilingual deployment, scenario library expansion, and market development across global NGO sector and adjacent application domains.

Multimedia Documentation

Video documentation of XRisis platform capabilities and validation outcomes available through Zenodo repository: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17052655