MASA SWORD’s New PIVTS Service Offering Improves Training Efficiency and Effectiveness While Reducing Costs

NEW ORLEANS — (BUSINESS WIRE) — January 16, 2012 — During the new International Disaster Conference & Expo (IDCE), at booth #509, MASA Group (“MASA”), a leading developer of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based Modeling & Simulation (M&S) software for the defense, homeland security, emergency management and serious games markets, is showcasing MASA SWORD, its state-of-the-art modeling and simulation solution for emergency management and crisis preparedness. MASA will also launch PIVTS (Plans Independently Verified Through Simulation), an all new service offering designed to help emergency management professionals easily assess their disaster preparedness plans, using SWORD technology.

"Since September 11, 2001, Homeland Security and Emergency Management Departments across the country have spent millions of dollars preparing, exercising and updating plans to help them better respond to disasters. Today, with budgets and personnel cut-backs, these departments must find new ways of verifying that their plans and personnel are capable of responding to an ever-widening array of potential emergencies,” explains Juan-Pablo Torres, MASA’s President and CEO. “At MASA, we believe that reduced resources should not mean diminished preparedness. That’s why we have developed PIVTS, a cost-effective and efficient service offering that leverages our flagship simulation product, SWORD, and puts powerful, cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology in the hands of DHS and emergency management experts to help them increase preparedness while reducing costs.", adds John D. Pietrzak, Vice President, MASA Group, Inc.

SWORD is a complete constructive simulation solution developed for emergency management training staff, crisis managers, and community leaders. SWORD is designed to allow managers to test their emergency procedures and cooperation plans between multiple agencies and organizations. Already in use by leading defense, homeland security, and emergency management organizations around the world, SWORD has been shown to significantly increase training efficiency and the effectiveness of emergency management plans, while lowering training costs.

Available online or as a desktop system, SWORD lets users efficiently prepare emergency management scenarios, rehearse procedures and validate wide-scale contingency plans without any of the risks, limitations and costly resources associated with live training. It enables users to build emergency scenarios for collaborative and online sessions thanks to an operational geographical information system (GIS)-based visualization of the entire situation. Managers can easily supervise several emergency management teams in parallel during the same complex exercise while maintaining top-level simulation realism.

PIVTS (Plans Independently Verified Through Simulation) is a new service offered by MASA designed to help emergency management professionals determine the key elements of their plan and develop a timeline for the simulation, thereby increasing their decision-making level of confidence. With PIVTS, customers can assess whether their disaster plans are sufficient or if they need to be updated or changed, by simulating the key elements of the plans. For example, after running a PIVTS session, emergency preparedness managers will be able to assess if they have enough vehicles for evacuation support and the appropriate levels of emergency medical services (EMS), fire and police personnel in place; they will be able to estimate if there are enough shelters, and whether the designated evacuation routes are capable of handling traffic loads.

Because PIVTS is implemented with the assistance of MASA's experts, no prior technology knowledge is required. SWORD and PIVTS can easily be integrated with existing emergency management command and control systems, GIS and other operational tools to provide realistic training in a familiar operational environment.

About MASA

MASA Group (“MASA”) is a global company focused on the development of Artificial Intelligence-based Modeling & Simulation (M&S) software for the Defense, Homeland Security, Emergency Management, Serious Games and Games Development markets. A trusted developer of cutting-edge AI technology for over fifteen years, MASA has founded its success on products that combine scalability, adaptability and low cost of ownership, with a strong standards-driven approach to technology.

The MASA product range, including MASA SWORD and MASA LIFE is uniquely designed to simplify and optimize the implementation of Artificial Intelligence capabilities for automating and driving simulated behaviors. Such capabilities allow developers and end-users in various sectors to focus their efforts on enabling a series of cost-efficient and highly realistic applications – such as command staff training, crisis management preparedness, exercise preparation, after-action review, doctrine & equipment analysis, and corporate training.

MASA products are already in use by leading organizations worldwide, including the French Army, other major armies around the world, Amper Programas, CAE, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Saab, SGO, Thales and Cliffhanger Productions. For more information visit www.masagroup.net.

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