Consulting firm develops crisis simulator.

• Author: Kilmer, Graham
• Position: Global Defense

* Former employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency have developed a platform for first responded to practice handling the glut of data that accompanies a catastrophe.

Simulation Deck provides emergency management personnel with a functioning replica of every major website on the Internet. The platform simulates thousands of "organic" responses to a major event on social media, image and video sharing sites, and traditional news outlets.

"It allows a handful of people in a room to emulate what it's like to have the Internet explode with information related to an incident," said Jim Chesnutt, president and CEO of Nusura, an emergency management firm that developed Simulation Deck.

The platform seeks to close the gap between the real world experience of responding to a crisis and what goes on in a training session, Chesnutt said. It allows the trainers to create thousands of responses to a calamity, he said.

The program can measure and respond to how the participants are reacting to the media, Chesnutt noted. For example, if an incident begins to get significant chatter on the Twitter simulation called "Bleater" and the user is failing to respond to it, a simulated traditional media outlet will cover the issue and force the players to react.

"Social media is increasingly vital because it's becoming a dominant form of...