Modeling users of crisis training environments by integrating psychological and physiological data

This paper describes aspects of a training environment for crisis decision makers who, notoriously, operate in highly stressful and unpredictable situations. Training such decision makers is the goal of Pandora-Box, a system which is able to teach a class of trainees representing different authorities that coordinate their interventions in critical situations. This paper dwells on the selection and modeling of the relevant human features that are shown to have an influence in decision making under crisis. The chosen features are used to create a trainee model on the basis of which the system adjusts the training exercises with the ultimate goal of maximizing the effectiveness of training. Trainees models are built by merging physiological and psychological data, and are represented by means of a timeline-based approach, a representation derived from planning technology. The infrastructure built for the trainee modeling constitutes the basis to assess the influence of specific variables (e.g., personality traits, self efficacy, stress and anxiety) on the performance of crisis managers during the training. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.