[Disaster City in College Station, TX]
A playground for military and urban search-and-rescue teams called Disaster City® is located in College Station, Texas. At 52 acres, the mock community contains full-scale, collapsible structures designed to simulate various levels of disaster and wreckage which can be customized for specific training needs.
It is "a place where tragedy and training meet."
The Texas Task Force 1 is a principal user of Disaster City which contains sections for mock emergency events, such as building collapse and passenger train derailment.
[Terror Town in Playas, NM]
The entire village of Playas, New Mexico, was purchased by New Mexico Tech and coverted into a training facility for anti-terrorism training. Known now as Terror Town, it is mostly fenced-off. Visitors must check in at a main gate. From there, only the residential area, a conference center and the business park are accessible to outsiders, and only with an escort.
[Playas, NM]
Rows of suburban-style homes make up other parts of town, which are designated for scenarios involving explosives, and chemical or biological training. Red lights flash atop locked gates, and a siren wails just before training sessions start.
One section of town has video cameras mounted on street poles and inside every room in every house.
(more here)
In Copehill Down, Wiltshire (UK), 11 teams of robots will compete to locate and identify four different threats hidden around a simulated East German village used for urban warfare training. The Ministry of Defense's challenge is designed to boost development of teams of small robots able to scout out hidden dangers in hostile urban areas.
["Quadrotor" robots
Some of the selected participating teams include Silicone Valley, Swarm Systems, and Stellar Consortium. Teams have elected to incorporate ground- and aerial-based robots. The event exists somewhere between a 1:1 live video game complete with points and a technology accelerator. (more at New Scientist)
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