Leveraging a Virtual Environment to Prepare for School Shootings

Active-shooter incidents within a school setting involve a unique subset of active-shooter events. These events tend to have significant differences in duration and outcome to events that occur in other locations, often being resolved before, or when, first-responders arrive on the scene. The frequency and seriousness of these events inspired the US Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate’s First Responder’s Group (DHS S&T FRG) to leverage ongoing work with the US Army Research Laboratory, Human Research and Engineering Directorate, Advanced Training & Simulation Division (ARL HRED ATSD) to establish a prototype virtual school environment to prepare teachers, administrators and staff on how to respond and work with Law Enforcement (LE) in the event of a school shooting. This virtual platform allows school staff and LE to practice various strategies and even supports analysis into how different security measures within the school environment might change the dynamic of an attack and response. The goal is to train affected groups together in advance of an attack to improve coordination and reduce response time and casualties. This paper illustrates design choices for training school teachers, administrators and other staff in a virtual environment in the event of a school shooting. These choices demonstrate unique development strategies related to controlling Artificial Intelligence (AI) through simple user interfaces, managing crowd behaviors and ultimately will include the ability to apply game engine level rules to different buildings or maps.