Project description
VR training for police response to emergencies
Police officers are typically the first emergency personnel to arrive to the scene of a high-risk or crisis situation. Emergency preparedness is vital in such cases. Oftentimes, police officers are forced to make decisions in dangerous high-stakes situations with ambiguous information under severe time constraints. The EU-funded SHOTPROS project will investigate the impact of psychological and contextual human factors on decision-making in high-risk operational situations. It will use virtual reality to measure the impact of these factors and design better training modules for police officers. The aim is to improve their overall performance under stress and to minimise the use of force while maximising safety.
Objective
The number of incidents where police officers are first responders in critical situations with severe threat circumstances has drastically increased. A major challenge for these first responding officers is to properly evaluate the situation and decide how to further proceed and to assess and choose the most appropriate strategy. The appropriateness of this decision is highly critical as it has a strong impact on the potential success of the operation as well as on the potential impacts, scene environment (e.g. witnesses, involved civilians, etc.) and consequences.
So the SHOTPROS project aims to investigate the influence of psychological and contextual human factors (HFs) on the behaviour of decision-making and acting (DMA) of police officers under stress and in high-risk operational situations in order to design better training for police officers to improve DMA Performance. SHOTPROS will develop a Virtual Reality (VR) solution to experimentally assess the degree to which these factors influence DMA behaviour. Subsequently the project will develop a HF-rooted training curriculum and a corresponding VR training solution to provide a comprehensive framework for practical training for decision-making and acting under stress and in high-risk (DMA-SR) situations in order to improve performance.The training will increase DMA-SR performance which will lead to better and more correct decisions (from several perspectives, e.g. law, ethic, etc.), to keep the guidance in threatened situations, to minimise use of force occurrences, and accordingly, to maximise the avoidance of casualties and collateral damage, such as panic and cascading or escalating effects.
SHOTPROS involves 6 law enforcement agencies (LEA) as it sees the capabilities of effective, efficient and “correct” DMA-SR of police forces as an utmost important part of a European Security Model and a high need for the daily combat against crime, terrorism, CBRNe threats and radicalisms.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- H2020-EU.3.7. - Secure societies - Protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens Main Programme
- H2020-EU.3.7.1. - Fight crime, illegal trafficking and terrorism, including understanding and tackling terrorist ideas and beliefs
- H2020-EU.3.7.8. - Support the Union's external security policies including through conflict prevention and peace-building
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
1040 WIEN
Austria
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.