Development and Validation of a Virtual Environment to Evaluate the Capacity in Executing the Safety Procedures in Recreational Scuba Diving

Recreational scuba diving courses have safety procedures in their curriculum to be followed in case of emergencies. However, the actual diving is often performed months after the training. Because these procedures are counterinstinctive, when emergencies occur the divers in panic cannot follow them. Thus a virtual environment was developed, presenting several emergency situations that may occur during a recreational dive. It used an Intel(®) (Santa Clara, CA) Core™2 Duo (1.66 GHz, 1 GB RAM) PC and Adobe (San Jose, CA) Fireworks and Adobe Flash 8 for animation and programming. The procedures to be followed were the standards of the Association of Dive Schools. This research found that the performance of divers on a questionnaire on diving safety procedures is very different than in the virtual environment.