US: In a small computer laboratory in downtown Chicago, epidemiologist Colleen Monahan is playing a video game designed to terrify the city's public health workers.
The scenario is grim. Someone has unleashed an unknown biological agent in several skyscrapers. Clouds of noxious gas are billowing in the streets, poisoning the air and seeping into the soil. The millions of sick and dying overwhelm the city's hospitals and clinics. What happens next? How do workers help the most people and prevent panic from tearing the city apart?
In the wake of the troubled emergency response to Hurricane Katrina, Chicago has budgeted as much as $500,000 (€418,901) to create video games that will help to train about 1,300 public health employees to prepare for a major disaster.
"Everyone wants to avoid a repeat of what happened in New Orleans, so training is clearly a hot topic right now," said Ms Monahan, director of the Centre for the Advancement of Distance Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, which is developing the training exercises for the city. "Games are a way people can have fun, and still be sure they're learning."
The games simulate what workers could face in a terrorist attack, natural disaster, or massive medical emergency such as an avian flu pandemic.
The first game, which puts players in the middle of a terrorist attack, is to be rolled out by late January. All public health workers are required to play the game by the end of the year.
The city project is one of a growing number of efforts in the US to use games to teach.
The US military has been a leading proponent of such digital tools, turning to games to recruit soldiers and train sharpshooters.
The Naval Research Office has helped fund Virtual Iraq, which recreates combat scenarios in the Middle East. Therapists are using the simulation to help Iraq veterans deal with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University have been working with the New York fire department on a game called Hazmat: Hotzone to train emergency workers how to deal with hazardous materials in various situations. In one scenario, firefighters race through Manhattan to a subway station where a green gas is coming out of a rubbish bin and commuters are having trouble breathing.
Chicago staff with emergency responsibilities had been trained with role-playing exercises. However, requiring about 1,000 people to walk through such drills was costly and time-intensive. The Chicago video game is fairly straightforward. Workers can play at least 23 characters, such as medical evaluator or someone dispensing drugs.
The Centre for the Advancement of Distance Education is also developing games featuring other catastrophes, including an anthrax outbreak, radiological exposure and the plague. - (LA Times-Washington Post service)