Objectives of SHOTPROS

One of the main goals of SHOTPROS is to quantify the influence of several human factors (i.e., contextual factors, psychological factors, etc.) on the decision-making and acting process under stress and in high-risk situations, controlling for the possible influence of organizational and environmental factors.

Based on these results, the project will develop a conceptual model of DMA in such situations, including the above-mentioned factors that influence perception, decision-making, behaviour and action in a potentially threatening situation for police forces. Additionally, risk-assessment as part of the decision-making process will be tackled. Furthermore, the conceptual model will be validated by testing the various premises of the model in research experiments and will then be further evaluated and refined.

The SHOTPROS project will develop a VR Training Framework that is able to dynamically introduce psychological (e.g. anxiety inducing) and physiological cues into virtual training scenarios. Throughout this development a large range of cues will be scientifically assessed, and after a pre-selection validated, for their ability to induce certain emotions and to train appropriate behaviour during VR training sessions.

This scientific validation will also consider the influence of situational and dispositional factors, e.g., socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity, etc.), personality (e.g., the Big Five), interactions (e.g., suspect resistance, dynamics between police officers and other first responders, presence of other people at the scene, etc.), and contextual factors (e.g., noise, smell, characteristics of the scene, other involved people in the scenario, etc.) on the cues’ emotion inducement abilities. Based on this research a repository of properly working (or inducing, respectively) cues will be constructed.

In an initial step, a comprehensive overview of existing decision-making trainings in law enforcement agencies across Europe and best practices for effective training of police forces for optimal decision making in real life situations will be gathered. A comparative analysis will show the common baseline, minimum mandatory (legally imposed) elements, strong aspects and shortcomings, as well as innovative approaches.
Building upon the identification of these best practices and utilizing the abilities of the evidence-based model of human decision-making (Objective 1) and the VR environment (Objective 2), the project will propose an innovative training program, using real-world training enhanced with VR training, for optimizing decision-making and acting in high-stress situations.

SHOTPROS aims to make the gained knowledge about VR trainings available for the future development and setup of training systems using VR technologies. For this purpose, it compiles all the created knowledge in several guidelines that can serve as a basis for the integration of VR training tools in European Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) existing training practices. With these guidelines that are based on findings of the requirements analysis and evaluations with end-users, SHOTPROS contributes to the efforts towards a harmonized and standardised European police training framework. The created guidelines support the European Security Model for enhancing the topic of “innovation and training” and standardisation of (training) frameworks within the European police forces and organisations.

SHOTPROS will establish a “VR Police Training Network” which will include the LEAs from SHOTPROS and reach out to other interested LEAs from the European Union (and EU partner countries) which are not part of the consortium project team Preparatory research, interviews and workshops with the European LEAs during the preparation of the proposal showed a lack of strategy and knowledge of VR Training in the fight against radicalization in crime and terrorism for Police forces.