Special Interest Groups

The SimTecT 2001 Organising Committee has made arrangements for meetings related to special interests in the area of simulation technology and training. Attendance at these Special Interest Group (SIG) meetings is open to all conference delegates with key people from relevant fields of activity having been asked to provide topics for discussion. SIG meetings are currently planned for the following:

SIG 1: HLA & Distributed Simulation	SIG 2: Training Needs Analysis
SIG 4: Defence Projects Briefings	SIG 3: Medical

HLA & Distributed Simulation
Facilitator - Dr John Best

As the distributed simulation community has embraced High Level Architecture, issues that cause consternation include interoperability with legacy DIS based simulations and interoperability of federates engineered to use different FOMs. Recent times have seen the emergence of a range of techniques and commercial products that mitigate these concerns. A popular approach is a gateway that translates between different simulation protocols, or between different FOMs.

At the SIG meeting, invited specialists will review the state of the art in HLA-DIS interoperability and FOM agility. Following short presentations, there will be the opportunity to question presenters and engage in discussion on outstanding interoperability challenges.

The invited panel members include Warren Katz of MäK Technologies and Dr John Wharington of DSTO's Maritime Platforms Division.

Dr John Best leads DSTO's Virtual Ship Project. Based in Maritime Operations Division (Salisbury), the project is drawing together the expertise of DSTO and industry to establish a comprehensive capability to simulate warship operations. The High Level Architecture provides the underlying means for linking simulation models.

In his capacity as leader of the Virtual Ship Project, Dr Best chairs the Virtual Ship Architecture Working Group (VSAWG). With membership across nine DSTO Divisions and ten defence companies, the VSAWG is working to establish the Virtual Ship Federation Object Model (VS-FOM) as a common reference for the maritime simulation community.

Through the VSAWG, the Virtual Ship Project is playing a leading role in facilitating the adoption of HLA within Australia. In 2000 it sponsored the conduct by DMSO of a Comprehensive Introduction to HLA course and Hand-on Practicum in HLA at DSTO Salisbury.







Defence Project Briefings

A number of briefings on current and future projects have been arranged - including:

Rescoping of Air 5413: Distributed Mission Training

Facilitators - GPCAPT Peter Layton, DoD
- Dr Simon Oldfield, DSTO
- Mr Geoff Northam, SIAA

A requirement exists for an Air-centric Distributed Mission Training (DMT) program which can leverage off previous work on programs, such as: the Virtual Air Environment, the Army Synthetic Environment, the Virtual Maritime Environment, the USAF DMT; as well as other Planning and Rehearsal, Battle Space Visualisation, and Simulation, systems and programs. The DoD is encouraging Industry participation and support in this effort, and envisage a multi-year multi task, evolutionary acquisition program of significant scope and effort, with an integrated focus.

This SIG will consist of interactive presentations from the DoD, DSTO and SIAA, with an objective of formulating the way ahead for realising Industry participation.







Training Needs Analysis

Facilitators - Phil Wallace
- Alex Doyle-Bogicevic

What's happening?

A TNA SIG meeting will be held at this year's SimTecT in Canberra. The proposal for this SIG meeting came from an SIAA TNA Workshop conducted in November last year. At the conclusion of this workshop participants overwhelmingly supported inclusion of an activity at SimTecT which would allow those interested to come together and share lessons learnt from TNAs related to simulation. The benefit of frank discussion between industry and Defence was seen to be an especially attractive aspect of such an activity.

How do I participate?

Participation in the TNA SIG meeting is free to all those attending this year's SimTecT. What are the issues?

The meeting will focus on 'lessons learnt' from past projects. The session will start with some short addresses by invited speakers, but the intent is for all those attending to raise issues of interest and collaboratively identify plausible solutions If you have some issues right now, send them along with your registration e-mail and we will put them on the SIAA website for consideration by others.

More information?

Contact the Facilitators Phil Wallace or Alex Doyle-Bogicevic for more information on this activity.







Medical

Facilitator - Dr Patrick Cregan

NOTE: The Medical SIG now forms part of the Medical Simulation Symposium held on Monday 28th May 2001.

Medical applications have many of the same criteria as other, more traditional applications of simulation technology: they are complex, training of "operators" is expensive, and there is a high consequence of failure. Recently, many of the technology issues associated with medical simulation have been overcome and medical applications are one of the high growth areas for simulation technology and tele-medicine. Recent improvements in simulation fidelity have led to acceptance of simulators as a valuable training tool, in particular for minimal access surgery. Imaging techniques are seen as a potentially rich source of data for the construction of accurate patient models.

The SIAA hosted a small workshop at its meeting in SimTecT 2000 in with representation from the CSIRO, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the University of Sydney Department of Surgery and the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists. A variety of projects are hoped to be developed from this collaboration. Various groups within medicine and healthcare have different levels of expertise with regard to simulation. The ANZCA, via simulators at Royal North Shore Hospital, Monash and Auckland, have advanced and sophisticated models that are in current use for training, re-training etc. Simulation on a lower level such as the use of pigs' trotters to teach interns and students to suture has also been used for a long time. Newer virtual reality techniques including things such as virtual actors offer us the opportunity to improve in particular our training and re-training and address other important issues such as distant learning. It is hoped ultimately that with good simulation, the process of 'learning by random opportunity' which is currently the most common method of clinical learning may be augmented and frequently replaced by the appropriate use of simulation.

The aim of this SIG is to bring together organisations and individuals (medical, engineering and scientific) who have an interest in the application of simulation technology to medical applications and to share their knowledge on this subject. This SIG covers the full spectrum of medical applications, including high level simulators where mocked-up operating theatres are used to recreate the surgical workplace, to part-task trainers which concentrate on a specific aspect, such as anaesthetist training.