Products

Avalanche ST®

Improve response times. Reduce risk.

Avalanche ST lets you build and run highly immersive computer-based functional exercises, then assess and report across your people, processes and technology.

Regular functional exercises. At low cost.

Conducting meaningful and regular exercises is an important validation that your plans are able to deal with the many situations that can occur.

The management of functional exercises for preparedness is a complex and costly task. Consequently organizations either commit large resources to creating elaborate events involving actors and real participants carrying out their roles, or they simply resort to overly simple classroom preparedness exercises. Avalanche ST bridges this gap by simplifying and automating the creation, delivery and after-action review of functional exercises.

Screenshot of Avalanche ST

Deliver training and functional exercises effortlessly.

The Avalanche process

Functional exercise scenarios. Designed by you. Fast.

Avalanche ST lets you put together your own training or functional exercises by providing an easy-to-use scenario designer in which you can rapidly build the scenarios that affect your organization. By adding the various injects that affect the participants in a scenario, you can quickly recreate the human side of a situation – the stresses, distractions and emotion that go along with the responsibilities at hand. Or, if you prefer, our team of scenario development experts are more than happy to assist with your exercise preparation needs.

Run exercises. In multiple locations. At the same time.

By running exercises with any combination of real and simulated participants, you can see how your people, process and technology interact with each other as the events of each scenario unfold. This unlocks a wealth of knowledge about the human factors of incident response, as well as improving the retention and recall speed of the required skills.

Automatic detailed logging for after action review and debrief.

Every action each participant takes in a scenario is tracked, allowing a detailed subsequent review of the outcomes of each scenario exercise. This information can be analyzed, assessed and annotated, and from this a detailed debrief report can be generated and printed for each exercise attempt. This is an excellent way to provide constructive feedback to your people, and to keep documented evidence of your preparedness efforts.

Quick reports. Peace of mind.

Whether you need to know the health of your organizational preparedness, or source a list of people who have demonstrated certain capabilities, Avalanche ST provides this information with just a few mouse clicks. The available suite of reports can provide invaluable information about the preparedness levels of your people.

Take action. Be better prepared.

For a confidential discussion about your preparedness needs and how Avalanche ST can assist your organization, contact Avalias today.

Features

  • FUNCTIONAL EXERCISES FOR INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS

    Individuals can take part in functional exercises where the computer plays all other roles. Alternatively, multiple participants in multiple roles can engage in a scenario together, working together to respond to the incidents that the computer is throwing at them. Or for larger scale exercises, representatives from multiple agencies can interact with each other, whilst engaging in realistic scenarios. Avalanche ST Enterprise Server allows your people to take part in immersive exercise with their team-mates, and can even support functional exercises across multiple organizations.

  • DESIGN AND BUILD YOUR OWN SCENARIOS

    Rapidly create your own functional exercise scenarios with Avalanche ST’s intuitive and easy-to-use scenario designer, reducing the cost of exercise development. Maintain and leverage the experience in your organization by creating scenarios out of the real-life situations your people have encountered. Maintain and update these scenarios making your organization less susceptible to loss of knowledge due to employee turnover.

    Running regular exercises with Avalanche ST is crucial for organizations whose mission critical emergency processes are out of date, or all too often, remain untested for considerable periods of time.

  • KEEPING IT REAL

    Avalanche ST uses a real-time scenario simulation engine to replicate the working environments of the various participants, immersing them in the experience of an event without the hazard of real-life consequence. Additionally, the solution allows you to monitor, track and record the exact actions and behaviors of multiple participants to the second.

    Following an exercise, after-action review, assessment and behavioral analysis can be carried out, providing valuable feedback about the current strengths and weaknesses of your people, processes and technologies.

  • KEEP TRACK OF YOUR COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS

    Create libraries of scenarios that test the abilities of teams and individuals to meet necessary regulatory requirements. Automatically provide after-action reports that adhere to strict compliance evaluation guidelines. Ensure that you are compliant within business processes, legal requirements, limitation of authority, division of responsibility, financial reporting and time-based delivery requirements.

  • DRIVE YOUR EXISTING SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS WITHIN Avalanche ST SCENARIOS

    Run scenarios where Avalanche ST drives and controls your applications during a scenario. Using our BlueBox™ technology, Avalanche ST can drive and track your real software applications for an even more realistic functional exercise experience.

  • ACCURATELY AND QUICKLY SIMULATE YOUR ORGANIZATION'S WORK ENVIRONMENT

    The Avalias suite of rapid development tools allow us to quickly and cost effectively simulate your organization's existing computer systems within Avalanche ST. We call these 'plug-in applications' – simulated versions of the applications that your people use in their day-to-day jobs.

    Imagine allowing your people to practice critical scenarios in an accurate simulated version of their real environment – with the scenario driving the software and the software affecting the scenario - that’s the power of Avalanche ST.

  • GROW YOUR PREPAREDNESS CAPABILITY AS NEEDED

    As your requirements grow, Avalanche ST is fully scalable to meet those needs, allowing multiple users across multiple locations. Grow your database of up-to-date scenarios and add to your preparedness skills across people, processes and technology.

  • VALIDATE NEW OR EXISTING PROCESSES

    Use Avalanche ST to benchmark and validate new processes or systems, or changes to existing ones. Stress-test your mission-critical processes to ensure those processes are robust and effective.

Videos

Frequently asked questions

I currently run paper-based exercises or tabletop exercises.
Why would I want to do this on a computer?

Whilst paper-based exercises and tabletop exercises have value in an initial discussion phase, such exercises do not provide any time pressures, nor do they get the participants to actually carry out the actions they are discussing. They allow participants to discuss for twenty minutes what they might do within the first 2 minutes of an incident.

Additionally, such exercises do not provide the stresses and distractions of a live incident.

Using a real-time simulation exercise, such as that which Avalanche ST provides, you can overcome the limitations of paper-based exercises and tabletops, allowing people to DO their jobs in real-time, rather than just talking about them. Additional computerized features assist with rapid scenario building capability, as well as enhancing the tracking of progress of the event together with ways to reduce the after event report effort.

Is Avalanche ST intended as a replacement for full-scale functional exercise?

A full-scale field functional exercise also can be a valuable preparedness activity. However, there are a number of compelling reasons why using a scenario simulator such as Avalanche ST for functional exercises is advantageous over a field exercise.

Cost

In a full-scale exercise, you are generally employing many additional people (i.e. actors) to play the roles of certain people within the scenario. In an Avalanche ST scenario, the computer is able to play many of these roles, resulting in a much more affordable exercise.

Rapid development of content

Creating scenario content using Avalanche ST technology is quick, easy and consistent. Save hours of time as the technology takes the stress out of preparing for your exercise.

Exercise Repeatability

Computer-based scenario exercises can be run over and over again, with different participants taking part each time, and the cost of doing so relative to running a repeat full-scale exercise is relatively tiny.

Participants Can Practice Alone

For smaller skill-based exercises, where the computer can play ALL roles except the one being exercised, this allows people to try out scenarios in their own time, practicing difficult situations during quiet periods, rather than having to wait for a scheduled full-scale exercise where everyone is able to attend.

Recorded and captured

In a full-scale exercise, you have observers who are paid to watch and write down notes on what everyone is doing. In an Avalanche ST simulation, however, all actions, behaviors, communications and other activities are automatically recorded with accurate time-stamped information, so that you can carry out a full after action review following the exercise.

Consequently, there are many situations where Avalanche ST can offer substantial cost and capability benefits over running full-scale exercises. For many organizations, the realism of Avalanche ST scenarios is high enough that full-scale exercises are no longer needed. Some organizations will still need to run full-scale exercises from time to time, however by running Avalanche ST exercises in-between these full-scale exercises, the participants should be much better prepared and less likely to make mistakes in the full-scale exercises, resulting in those costly exercises proving to be a much for fruitful experience.

What can I do in an After-Action Review?

Following an exercise you are able to look at details of what each participant in an exercise did. Using a simple interface, you can view the interactions between participants (e.g. communications, and conversations) alongside everything else that each person did during the scenario. For example, if someone sent an email to their supervisor, you will see that they did it and be able to read the email. If this email caused the supervisor to place a phone call to the head of the department, then you will see that they did this and be able to listen to what they said. As a reviewer, you are then able to provide feedback in the form of comments, scores, labels and ideas.

Can I design my own scenarios?

Yes! In fact, with the Avalanche ST Scenario Designer, you can design your own scenarios very rapidly. Once you know what occurrences a scenario is going to contain, creating the scenarios is a very straightforward and simple task. Of course, Avalias is always available if you would like assistance and our expertise in creating more complex scenarios.

Can Avalanche ST be used across the internet?

Avalanche ST can operate in a number of network environments. Namely:

  • On its own isolated intranet (e.g. a training room)
  • Connecting to an organization’s existing intranet (e.g. your office building)
  • Over the Internet (e.g. multiple locations, with the server hosted at the organization’s headquarters). The server can be hosted in any location, provided that a broadband connection exists to all locations where the client software is going to be run.
Note: For secure locations, using a VPN connection is highly recommended

Is Avalanche ST a web-based product?

Avalanche ST runs across the web, but it does not currently run in a web browser. Web browsers do not allow the rich level of interactivity required for realistic immersive scenario simulation exercises. Instead, the software runs as a thin-client connecting to a server, in much the same manner as your favorite instant messaging software.

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