Developing a Public Online Learning Environment for Crisis Awareness, Preparation, and Response

This article describes the design and development of an online immersive learning environment focused on enhancing the general public's awareness of, and preparation for, crisis situations. This research has sought to answer the question “Is it possible to develop a timeline based immersive and engaging training environment for mass self-study education in crisis preparedness?” The system developed is based on the Pandora+ training environment and integrates original collaborative European research work carried out on eLearning and Crisis Management over the last ten years. The research reported here not only describes the design of the Pandora+ training environment but also the outputs from a pilot trial in Lisbon run by the POP-ALERT EU FP7 project. Where appropriate, the results were also compared to those from a large EU survey on crisis preparedness and attitudes, also undertaken within POP-ALERT. The results of this article have resulted in an original and innovative system that has significant potential to transform the education of the public in disaster preparedness.