Emergency drills with or without a simulator?

Important objectives of emergency drills, such as communication among personnel in the control room and the emergency task force, as well as supervision and coordination of emergency measures on the spot, are achieved rather less well by simulator training than in the absence of simulators. In emergency drills, it is less important to have available a complete set, correct in terms of time and physical significance, of parameters and signals as produced by a simulator. Also training for other measures important in emergencies, which are initiated form the control room, such as rescuing persons or combating fires, is more likely to be impeded by a simulator. If it is taken into account, moreover that simulator drills require more preparation, scheduling and communication links, while a physically exact sequence of accident phases is not the main point of interest in emergency drills, simulator exercises should only be conducted if so many parameters are required to assess the situation that they cannot be supplied in written documents, or if such documents could not be interpreted by the shift crew. (orig.)