The Korean National Fire Service Academy (KNFSA) has opened its Advanced Disaster Management Simulator (ADMS) Training Center in South Korea. ADMS is a virtual reality-based team training system, which provides emergency responders an opportunity to develop skills and exercise plans.

KNFSA contracted Environmental Tectonics Corporation to provide the training system. The ADMS system is used to provide advanced training for all Korean fire service officers in low- and high-rise internal structural firefighting, industrial and hazardous material fires, major road traffic accidents, urban search and rescue and mountain wildfires.

The system was installed in Cheonan and, with 20 networked training stations, is the largest ADMS installation to date. The high-fidelity virtual environment created for the KNFSA ADMS is nearly 200 square miles and features the crowded urban city regions and mountainous rural areas uniquely representative of Korea.

KNFSA uses the simulation-based training because the dense and heavily populated Korean cities make it especially difficult to realistically train for massive incidents or natural disasters. The virtual environment also features suburban residential areas and a commercial/industrial area. The ADMS Scenario Generator allows KNFSA to develop an unlimited number of training scenarios, from small, simple incidents to major mass-casualty disasters.