Assemblyman Lee Hyung-seok: "Serious Budget Waste in Fire Agency's Virtual Reality Disaster Training Production"

Similar Disaster Environment Production by Region... Budget Leakage Occurs

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Yoon Jamin] The National Fire Agency is strengthening virtual reality (VR) training to enhance the capabilities of on-site commanders, but there are criticisms that budget waste is occurring as similar VR disaster environments are being separately produced by region.

Additionally, there is a shortage of instructors who can conduct VR training, resulting in significant regional disparities in educational outcomes.

Lee Hyung-seok, a member of the National Assembly (Democratic Party of Korea, Gwangju Buk-gu Eul), stated on the 14th, “While VR training for fire command is gaining attention, issues such as budget leakage due to individual video production and a shortage of VR training instructors are arising.”

Until now, fire command was based on the judgment of experienced frontline leaders at disaster sites, but with changes in disaster patterns and new variables such as the increasing height and size of buildings, there is a growing demand for fire command training to respond to these changed situations.

However, since gaining fire command experience at large-scale disaster sites is not easy, VR technology-based fire command training has recently been gaining attention.

VR training, which first started at the Seoul Fire Headquarters in 2015, expanded last year to Gyeonggi Province and the Central Fire Academy, and currently, the Gwangju region is also planning command training through VR.

The National Fire Agency is known to plan to strengthen the capabilities of on-site commanders using this VR training.

Based on the redesigned “Command Capability Development Program” this year, education and evaluation processes for on-site commanders (Fire Captain, Lieutenant, Sergeant) are currently being pilot-operated, with plans to reflect this in personnel management in the future.

The problem lies in budget leakage caused by individual commissioning in the production of virtual disaster environments for VR training.

Rep. Lee pointed out, “After reviewing VR environment video materials received from the Seoul ICTC Center, Gyeonggi CICT Center, and Central Fire Academy Leadership Center, although the VR training content is largely similar, individual production is being carried out, causing budget leakage in virtual environment development costs.”

In the case of the Seoul ICTC Center, which first started VR training, about KRW 1.645 billion (approximately KRW 45 million per item) was spent to build 36 disaster environment items.

The 36 items include disaster environments tailored to regional characteristics such as fires at Gangnam Station and Yeoksam Station, as well as universal disaster environments like fire, forest fire, wind and flood damage, elevator accidents, national large-scale disaster accidents, and infectious diseases. Some of these disaster environments are not significantly different from those produced by the Gyeonggi CICT Center or the Central Fire Academy Leadership Center.

Along with this, the shortage of instructors capable of conducting VR training is also pointed out as a problem.

Currently, the Gyeonggi CICT Center has only six instructors, and the Central Fire Academy Leadership Center has only four, making it difficult to meet the increasing demand for education.

This results in disparities in educational outcomes. The Seoul ICTC Center, which has 39 instructors, conducted 52 training sessions this year with 829 graduates, whereas the Gyeonggi CICT Center held 36 sessions with 448 graduates, and the Central Fire Academy Leadership Center only 10 sessions with 395 graduates.

Rep. Lee stated, “Although the National Fire Agency has announced plans to strengthen on-site command capabilities through VR training and implement an on-site commander evaluation certification system, there is an absolute shortage of instructors to guide VR training as well as budget leakage in disaster environment production. Seoul, Gyeonggi Province, and the Central Fire Academy should jointly produce VR disaster environments and share the produced environments to reduce costs, and expand the number of VR training instructors to ensure smooth fire command training.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.