Background
Real chemical-accident and terror sites are too hazardous to use for repeated live drills. To close that gap, South Korea's National Institute of Chemical Safety (NICS) — an agency under the Ministry of Environment — built an extended-reality training programme that recreates chemical incidents and terror scenarios in immersive virtual environments, letting military, police and fire responders rehearse on-site judgement and inter-agency coordination safely and repeatedly.
The system
The programme was developed with Korean XR studio Skonec Entertainment, which partnered with NICS in 2021 to apply its large-space metaverse and digital-twin technology to chemical-safety training. It brings together several components:
- A field-operational VR simulation in which multiple responders train together
- A portable "mobile XR" unit that takes the training to sites without a fixed centre
- More than 80 scenarios spanning chemical accidents and terror response
- An intelligent learning-management system that tracks trainee progress
- An AI-agent system that guides trainees through equipment and procedures
Recognition
NICS entered the programme as Chemical Incident & Terror Response in XR at Augmented World Expo (AWE) USA 2026 in Long Beach, California. Chosen from more than 330 projects across 18 categories, it won the Best Education & Training Solution Auggie Award — recognition of both its technical maturity and its training effectiveness for public-safety use.
