# 1329
Think of it as a flight simulator for a pandemic crisis.
You sit at a computer and a scenario unfolds. You must make decisions based on the information provided, and those decisions then affect what happens next.
Welcome to the 21st century, where public officials can train in advance, without killing anyone, to deal with a pandemic crisis on a computer.
This from the Chicago Tribune.
Mock flu crisis enlightening
Officials surprised by rapid events
By Ryan Haggerty | Tribune staff reporter
December 7, 2007
The effects of the computer-simulated flu pandemic kept getting worse and worse: highways and airports shut down, hospitals filled to capacity, pharmacies running out of medicine.
As the consequences of the virtual disease became direr, public and private officials taking part in an emergency-response drill Thursday got a taste of the high-pressure decisions they would have to make should such a disaster happen in Chicago.
Representatives of the city's Police, Fire and Public Health Departments, the Mayor's Office, the Office of Emergency Management and Communication and the business community sat at computers in the CNA Building, 333 S. Wabash Ave., evaluating on-screen information about the pandemic as it spread and making quick decisions about how best to deal with it.
About 100 employees of various city agencies and private businesses watched on projection screens as the officials decided how to respond to power outages, staffing shortages at police and fire departments and a lack of basic supplies at supermarkets.
"Decision-making is the critical thing here," said Len Pagano, president and chief executive officer of the Safe America Foundation, a sponsor of Thursday's exercise. "What we were doing was giving individuals the opportunity to [evaluate] the decisions they made."
When some participants said they were surprised at how quickly the situation was changing, the drill's director reminded them that a real pandemic would not present an opportunity for a time-out.
"It's the way the real world works," said Dennis Damore, senior director at Crisis Simulations International, which developed the simulation program.
Chicago is the first city to host the pandemic flu simulation, Pagano said.
CSI (Crisis Simulations International) maintains a web site where you can get a better idea of how all of this works. Their pandemic crisis simulator is described on their site as follows:
Crisis Simulations International, LLC, in collaboration, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center has developed a pandemic flu simulation and training system using CSI's patent pending simulation software. This system trains public health officials, health care executives, senior business and government leaders, and others by allowing them to make decisions and experience the 'stress' of a real crisis in the safety of a training environment. Because the simulation allows the participants to experience a pandemic flu outbreak as if it were real, they learn about the second, third, and fourth order consequences of their own decisions and of interdependent organizations in the private and public sectors.
While I haven't seen this program in action, the idea behind it strikes me as being a pretty good one. It's one thing to say, "We'll deal with a pandemic if one comes", quite another to be put on the hot seat and charged with making decisions in a simulator.
When things go bad in a crisis, they often do so in a hurry. Decisions made in haste can often turn out to have unintended consequences, setting into motion a series of events that can quickly get out of hand.
At least, on a simulator, you have a reset key.
A luxury not available during a real pandemic.
