Objectives of the service
XR4Emergency addresses a growing challenge faced by firefighters and civil protection agencies across Europe: current training approaches are no longer sufficient to prepare professionals for increasingly complex and unpredictable climate-related emergencies such as megafires and simultaneous wildfire events. Existing soft-skills training is often limited, costly, difficult to organise, and disconnected from the environmental intelligence now available through satellite data.
The service provides a satellite data-based immersive training environment that combines Virtual Reality (VR), an interactive dashboard, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-supported debriefing. Using historical satellite data from real wildfire events, firefighters in strategic and tactical positions train in realistic multi-actor scenarios that strengthen communication, teamwork and coordination, leadership, decision making and situational awareness. The platform also supports evidence-based reflection after the exercise provided by an AI-coach, helping users understand the consequences of their actions and improve future performance.
The training is designed around a continuous cycle of situational assessment, information exchange, decision-making, task assignment, scenario evolution and reassessment.
Users and their needs
XR4Emergency targets firefighters, focusing on incident commanders and team leaders. The users involved in the activity represent firefighting and emergency response organisations across Europe, from the Netherlands, Norway, Italy, Romania, Sweden, Portugal, and Germany. Operational personnel and training experts contributed to the identification and validation of user needs.
The key user needs identified are:
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More complex and dynamic soft-skills training for rapidly evolving climate-related emergencies.
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Outcome- and performance-driven training that helps teams understand the consequences of decisions and actions.
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Climate change-oriented scenarios reflecting megafires, simultaneous fire events, and changing environmental conditions.
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Better awareness and understanding of satellite-based environmental information for operational decision-making.
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Flexible, realistic, and ready-made training solutions that reduce organisational burden, time requirements, and costs.
One of the main project challenges is that certain satellite data sources currently update too slowly for rapidly unfolding large-scale wildfire events. XR4Emergency concept therefore combines available satellite intelligence with simulated environmental updates to maintain realism, operational relevance, and effective decision-making support.
Service/ system concept
XR4Emergency delivers a Proof-of-Concept of a ‘Multi-actor immersive simulation with debriefing capabilities’ as a Training-as-a-Service solution, involving Incident Commanders and Team Leaders in realistic intervention scenarios for climate-driven wildfire emergencies.
The system is built around five connected system components:
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Backend: the core of the system, storing environmental and geospatial data, wildfire scenarios, 3D assets, user profiles, communications, and exercise logs. It manages all data exchange between the components.
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Configuration Panel: a web-based interface used by instructors to prepare exercises.
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Coordination Dashboard: a strategic and tactical interface displaying environmental and geospatial information such as fire hotspots, fuel load, wind, terrain, and weather. It allows Incident Commanders to coordinate teams, receive field reports, and monitor the emergency situation during the simulation.
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VR Applications: immersive environments used by Team Leaders to perform field operations, communicate with the command centre, and interact with an evolving wildfire scenario influenced by environmental conditions and player actions.
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Debriefing Dashboard: a post-exercise review platform that replays relevant events and supports structured reflection through AI-guided debriefing questions.
The Training-as-a-Service (TaaS) solution enables unlimited soft-skills training for emergency response organisations through an annual subscription model, complemented by optional customisation add-on services.
Space Added Value
XR4Emergency concept combines multiple European Earth Observation assets, Copernicus services and derived products to create realistic, data-driven wildfire training scenarios. The solution uses Earth Observation data and products from Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3, Meteosat, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, and Copernicus Digital Elevation Models. These sources provide information on fire hotspots, weather conditions, wind speed and direction, vegetation and fuel load, terrain characteristics, soil moisture, drought conditions, smoke propagation, and historical fire patterns.
The main added value lies in combining these complementary data sources within a single training environment. Existing training solutions and simulation platforms typically rely on scripted scenarios or manually designed environments that are not directly connected to real environmental conditions. XR4Emergency uses satellite-derived and modelled information from historical wildfire events to recreate realistic operational contexts and evolving environmental conditions. Where data update frequencies are insufficient for training purposes, the system intelligently complements them with simulated updates while maintaining consistency with the underlying environmental data. This enables firefighters to train using geographically relevant, evidence-based scenarios while improving their ability to interpret and apply satellite-derived information during decision-making, coordination, and emergency response operations.
Current Status
XR4Emergency has completed the development and validation of its Proof-of-Concept. Following the initial user-needs analysis and concept definition, the concept was further developed through co-design activities with end users and translated into prototype versions of the Coordination Dashboard, VR Application and AI Coach.
The integrated concept was subsequently tested and validated with firefighting professionals. The validation focused on the concept’s relevance to real operational needs, as well as its technical, operational, and usability aspects
Feedback from the validation was used to refine the concept and identify priorities for further technical development, supporting the project’s final TRL3 Proof-of-Concept and its pathway towards future development and commercialisation.
