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 teams 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 train in realistic multi-actor scenarios that strengthen coordination, communication, decision-making, situational awareness, and adaptability under pressure. The platform also supports evidence-based reflection after the exercise provided by an AI-coach, helping teams understand the consequences of their actions and improve future performance.
The activity focuses on designing, validating, and demonstrating this Training-As-A-Service concept together with European end users, while defining the operational, technical, and training requirements needed for future deployment and commercialisation.
Users and their needs
XR4Emergency targets firefighters, focusing on incident commanders, team leaders, and operational personnel. 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, Team Leaders, and firefighter teams in realistic, historical intervention scenarios for climate-driven wildfire emergencies.
The system is built around five connected system components:
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Backend: the central core of the system, storing satellite-derived environmental data, wildfire scenarios, 3D assets, user profiles, communications, and exercise logs. It manages all data exchange between the different components.
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Configuration Panel: a web-based interface used by instructors to prepare exercises.
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Incident Commander Dashboard: a tactical interface displaying satellite-based information such as fire hotspots, wind, terrain, weather, and smoke. It allows incident commanders to coordinate teams, receive field reports, and monitor the evolving emergency situation in real time.
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Virtual Reality Applications: immersive environments used by team leaders and firefighters to perform field operations, communicate with the command centre, and interact with a dynamically evolving wildfire scenario influenced by environmental conditions and player actions.
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Debriefing Dashboard: a post-exercise review platform that replays key events and supports structured reflection through AI-guided debriefing questions.
The Training-as-a-Service (TaaS) solution enables continuous, 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 space assets to create realistic, data-driven wildfire training scenarios. The solution uses Earth Observation data from Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3, Sentinel-5P, Meteosat, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, and Copernicus Digital Elevation Models. These assets provide information on fire hotspots, weather conditions, wind speed and direction, vegetation and fuel load, terrain characteristics, soil moisture, drought conditions, smoke propagation, air quality, and historical fire patterns.
The main added value lies in combining these complementary space assets 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 information from historical wildfire events to recreate realistic operational contexts and continuously evolving environmental conditions. Where satellite update frequencies are insufficient for training purposes, the system intelligently complements them with simulated updates while maintaining consistency with the underlying satellite data. This enables firefighters to train using geographically relevant, evidence-based scenarios while improving their ability to interpret and apply satellite information during decision-making, coordination, and emergency response operations.
Current Status
XR4Emergency has completed the concept definition phase. Interviews with firefighters across Europe were conducted to assess current soft-skills training practices, XR training adoption, and the use of satellite data. Based on the identified user needs, three high-level concepts were developed and then assessed by end-users to a dedicated survey.
Based on the survey results, the most promising concepts were selected, refined, and merged into the “Multi-Actor Immersive Simulation with Debriefing Capabilities” concept, which was then further developed from both a training and technical perspective.
The project has now entered the co-design and prototype development phase. Current activities include the development of a dashboard mock-up, a VR demonstrator, and an AI coach prototype, together with the preparation of validation sessions involving operational firefighters and training instructors.
These activities contribute to a validated Proof-of-Concept at TRL 3 by the end of this kick-start phase.
