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Virtual Emergency Reception Centre

In case a nuclear or radiological emergency (NRE) situation arises, authorities set up appropriate emergency reception centres near the scene of the incident. The primary aim of such centres is to tend to the immediate medical needs of affected individuals. If time and situation allow, decontamination may also take place.

 

Through my recent work at the IAEA, I have been widely involved in building capacity for medical physicists to support response to NRE situations.  During my IAEA assignment, I  realised that there were few resources providing a visual and/or intuitive representation of an NRE reception centre. Except for the excellent Virtual Community Reception Center (vCRC) training tool, provided by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), not much else was available on the web.

After my assignment with the IAEA was completed, I decided to contribute towards visualisation of an emergency reception centre. I first worked on the creation of an animated video description of an NRE reception centre. This is a complementary post providing access to a 3-D simulated environment, that allows the user/player to wander around a virtual NRE reception centre and learn a lot about its layout and functions. The user may walk up to relevant “Info points” marked with a rotating red “i” as seen in the screenshot below and get relevant information. When the player is close to an “Info point”, information appears automatically on screen.

To play the game, extract the contents of the compressed folder and run the application file (NRE_reception_centre.exe). You may receive a warning from your system that the publisher of this application has not been verified. Please ignore this message and proceed to opening the application.

On the dialog box that will open you may select the preferred settings for your game. Select the screen resolution and graphics quality (higher graphics quality is more demanding for system resources). If you have more than one displays you may select where the game will appear. Running the game in windowed mode is easier, as it allows to close the window and exit the game immediately.

 

Bibliography

INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, Generic Procedures for Medical Response During a Nuclear or Radiological Emergency, IAEA, Vienna (2005).

© 2023 by T. Berris. All rights reserved.

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