br Defence diving school early briefings The

Defence diving school early briefings The DDS is located at the UK shore hesperetin HMS Excellence on Horsea Island, originally off the northern shore of Portsmouth Harbour but today connected to the mainland as a result of reclamation. Since 1995, the school has provided diving training for numerous branches of the UK\'s Armed Forces, including basic military diving training for all RN and Army (Royal Engineers) clearance and MCM divers (Fig. 1). Early dive training observations and briefings from DDS project stakeholders identified a range of concerns, many of which suggested a strong potential for technology-based classroom training to help illustrate some of the search and identification problems associated with degraded vision and situational or spatial awareness (an old, but still highly relevant article on which is provided in Reference [13]). When conducting mine identification and clearance activities on the seabed, in water columns and especially under ships\' hulls, the MCM diver must be able to cope with these conditions and numerous other physical constraints to discern between harmless artefacts and any possible explosive ordnance. The diver\'s task is further complicated by the need to follow specific underwater search patterns and there is, therefore, a crucial need for a strong sense of orientation in an environment where visual cues can be sparse. The outcome of such scenarios is of particular concern as the potential implications from false positives and, more importantly, false negatives can be severe. An additional issue was also raised relating to what was labelled as “psychological fear” on the part of some trainees when they experienced under-hull diving for the first time. This was described as a combination of (a) a realisation on the part of the diver that, depending on vessel type, s/he is actually swimming under some 8000 to 22,000 tonnes of steel, (b) spatial disorientation brought about by exhaled gas bubbles moving no further than the immediate hull section (depending on what part of the vessel the diver is inspecting), and (c) a similar psychological effect to that experienced by some astronauts during the start of their very first extra-vehicular activity (EVA) when the “call of the abyss” – a fear of falling and spatial disorientation – can occur as a result of the Earth appearing underneath below their body\'s location (e.g. Reference [14]; p 373). The DDS instructors claimed that, as a result of one or more of these experiences, some clearance divers have actually left the service after their first operational dive in the vicinity of an RN vessel. Another, related concern that became apparent during briefings with DDS instructors and specialists was the lack of training provided covering specific tasks and specific vessel types. Vessel hull inspection was cited as an excellent example of a task that could not, at that time, be performed at Horsea Island, yet divers with minimum experience could quite easily be expected to conduct such inspections on and around a variety of RN assets, including completely new platforms, such as the Astute class of submarine, the Type 45 Destroyer or the new Queen Elizabeth Carrier. It was felt that vessel- and task- specific training using appropriate simulation technologies might help to overcome some of the psychological issues described above, especially when inspecting a large, unfamiliar hull for the first time.
After action review Very broadly, the term After Action Review (AAR) refers to processes that support meaningful and interactive instructor–student reviews of training outcomes with the aim of improving subsequent individual or group performance through reflective learning, or to “correct training deficiencies” [15]. In the case of recent simulation-based training applications, AARs may be generated by embedded software algorithms that log and subsequently present summaries of pre-defined behaviours exhibited during a specific training session. However, the concept of AAR is not new. A number of research reviews make reference to “after-combat interviews” used during World War II, or “performance critiques” developed in the 1970s (e.g. Reference [16]). Nevertheless, the power of the AAR process is now well established and, if designed appropriately, enables both trainer and trainee to understand and reflect upon what happened during a training session, how monocots happened and why it happened. AAR is finding significant application within those organisations whose personnel work in high-risk environments (e.g. the military, nuclear industry, fire-fighting, etc.), or where human error can produce unacceptable consequences, such as in the medical and surgical domain (e.g. Reference [17]).