2 Oct 2025

Innovative Existing Building Commissioning (EBCx) Assessment Training Tools

Abstract: In an effort to develop active and engaging online training experiences that effectively simulate hands-on lessons and provide an experience equivalent to on-site visits, researchers at the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) developed a series of immersive web-based training tools that support virtual learning. This report discusses the role of active learning, the need for advanced training tools, and describes the CERL effort to develop training tools. It also provides feedback on the experiences and effectiveness of various platforms that were used to develop these tools.

22 Sep 2022

Ship Simulator of the Future in Virtual Reality

Introduction: The Army’s modernization priorities include the development of augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) simulations for enabling the regiment and increasing soldier readiness. The use of AR/VR technology at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) is also growing in the realm of military and civil works program missions. The ERDC Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL) has developed a ship simulator to evaluate bay channels across the world; however, the current simulator has little to no physical realism in nearshore coastal regions (Figure 1). Thus, the ERDC team is researching opportunities to advance ship simulation to deliver the Ship Simulator of the Future (SSoF). The SSoF will be equipped with a VR mode and will more accurately resolve nearshore wave phenomena by ingesting precalculated output from a Boussinesq-type wave model. This initial prototype of the SSoF application is intended for research and development purposes; however, the technologies employed will be applicable to other disciplines and project scopes, including the Synthetic Training Environment (STE) and ship and coastal structure design in future versions.