Virtual Operations Centres for Coalition Operations and Distributed Team Collaboration

On-line multi-user virtual worlds have been used to create collaboration environments and shared virtual spaces to allow distributed teams to train, exercise or work together. Platforms such as Linden Lab's Second LifeTM or the open source community's OpenSimulator have been used to provide easily accessed facilities in which users are represented by avatars in a space designed to support their collaboration and sharing of resources. The creation of a suitable virtual space allows users wherever they are located to be brought together into a shared visualisation of an "operations centre". This may be joined with real operations centre(s) to integrate a distributed team to allow them to more effectively address the task or operations they are engaged in. Such environments are particularly well suited to training and exercises, but can also be used for real events when distributed teams are involved. The paper describes the "Open Virtual Collaborative Environment" (OpenVCE) and its facilities, and how the resources have been made widely available as a basis for creating customised environments and used for multi-national and multi-agency team collaboration facilities especially where teams are geographically distributed.