Incident Commander: Free for Safety Personnel
Developed under contract to the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Incident Commander is a PC-based software simulation. It incorporates the command structure mandated by FEMA for NIMS. Its developers claim that it will help train managers for critical incidents.
Incident Commander focuses on jurisdictions < 500,000, and covers multiple scenarios, such as school hostage-taking, chemical spills, terrorism and severe weather. Roles include a full spectrum of participants, including police, fire, EMS, public works and school. It is unclear from the website whether Incident Commander addresses medical facility concerns during these emergencies.
Breakaway Games developed the game in a way to permit both web-based multi player use and single user applications. The most recent version, 1.5, was released in August 2006.
According to a message post on the site's forum, BreakAway is still awaiting final approval for the logo from DOJ, which may account for the paucity of postings on the message board.
Forum postings are an important dimension to requirements gathering for simulation designers.
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