The Police College's in-house developed electronic training system - Scenario-based Interactive Multimedia Simulation (SIMS) - has won two international awards. SIMS ranked as the finalist of the Adobe MAX Awards 2007 in the "Communication and Collaboration" category in Chicago, USA, in October this year.

The Adobe MAX Awards scheme is a prestigious recognition for software developers and designers worldwide. Since there were only two finalists in the category, SIMS is the de-facto first runner-up of the Award.

SIMS was also honoured as "Project of the Year in 2007" in the "Soft Skills/Business Simulation" category of the Training Technology in Action Awards organised by "Training" magazine. "Training" is a well-known journal for training professionals, published by the famous marketing consulting firm, Nielsen Business Media. The judging panels of both awards all agreed that SIMS is an innovative work, and that it has a flexible and highly integrated training platform for facilitating scenario-based training with small footprint.

SIMS is an electronic training platform with capability for scenario-based exercise facilitation and multiple-player participation. The main objective of this project is to promote scenario-based training and enhance training effectiveness.

After the worldwide terrorist attacks and crisis incidents in recent years, there is an imminent and pressing need for the Force to train officers at senior and middle ranks in handling critical incidents.

The Force runs several territory-wide exercises simulating critical incidents every year. As this kind of scenario-based training will involve multiple units and agencies at various locations, it is costly and difficult to simulate real-life scenarios. Consequently, only a limited number of officers can be trained. A cost-effective training solution without troop is required to train more officers and to supplement a conventionally labour-intensive exercise. Under such consideration, Police College has actively researched into a computer network-based electronic training system since 2006. After the project team made reference to several similar training systems used by other law enforcement agencies, a flexible and cost-effective training system has been developed in-house - SIMS.

The advantages of SIMS include:

* Smart design - Simple in design, easy to operate and no top niche equipment is required.

* Collaboration - An interactive communication platform is provided to facilitate collaboration in learning.

* Multimedia communication - Real-time multimedia communication (such as text, voice, video, film archive and video conferencing, etc.) is supported. These data can be recorded and used for a debriefing session.

* Scenario-based simulation - Instructors can, according to the exercise development and trainees' feedback, design and deliver corresponding virtual scenarios. Consequently SIMS can foster peer communication and collaboration in role-play.

Since SIMS is smart in design, scenarios are virtual and training resources are reusable, making SIMS much less costly compared with a face-to-face exercise. Owing to SIMS's high mobility, training can easily be arranged and more officers can be trained. In addition, SIMS can foster interactivity and collaboration among trainees, thus enhancing the overall training results. Moreover, instructors can make use of the recorded multimedia data of an exercise to make analysis and discuss with trainees instantly in a debriefing session. As a result, training effectiveness can be enhanced.

Mr Frankie Tong, a core member of the project team and a Multimedia Developer of the Learning Technologies Division (LTD) of the Police College, commended: "We feel honoured by the two awards, but we are more pleased that SIMS has been used for command courses with very good results."

In fact, SIMS is solely an electronic training platform; it has to incorporate with the curriculum design for achieving the best result. The Management Learning Division (MLD) of the Police College has played an essential role in this aspect. Last year, when SIMS was being adopted for the leadership training of command courses, MLD designed a series of highly innovative and interactive multimedia scenarios for SIMS, in addition to setting up a simulated control centre. Role-plays using SIMS were conducted for various kinds of training, such as data collection, intelligence analysis, operation planning, decision-making and simulated press conference. Therefore, without corresponding scenario design and the commitment of MLD, SIMS would not have attained its achievement.

Mr Lawrence Leung, Multimedia Development Manager of LTD, said: "MLD Superintendent Kieran Wright has provided many valuable suggestions for the design and enhancement of SIMS, which is an open interactive platform, suitable for any themes and simulations in training. We welcome other training units in the Force to try out this system and get the maximum benefit."

Chief Inspector Yip Kai-hung from Learning Technologies Division (third from left) and the SIMS project team proudly show off the two international awards