Abstract Active shooter incidents represent an increasing threat to American society, especially in commercial and educational buildings. In recent years, a wide variety of security countermeasures have been recommended by public and governmental agencies. Many of these countermeasures are aimed to increase building security, yet their impact on human behavior when an active shooter incident occurs remains underexplored. To fill this research gap, we conducted virtual experiments to evaluate the impact of countermeasures on human behavior during active shooter incidents. A total of 162 office workers and middle/high school teachers were recruited to respond to an active shooter incident in virtual office and school buildings with or without the implementation of multiple countermeasures. The experiment results showed countermeasures significantly influenced participants’ response time and decisions (e.g., run, hide, fight). Participants’ responses and perceptions of the active shooter incident were also contingent on their daily roles, as well as building and social contexts. Teachers had more concerns for occupants’ safety than office workers. Moreover, teachers had more positive perceptions of occupants in the school, whereas office workers had more positive perceptions of occupants in the office.
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Dynamic Escape Signs for Safe Egress in School Shooter Situation
School shooter situations can be a terrifying time for all involved. It is important that, if the situation occurs, there is a smart, efficient system in place to move each classroom to safety as quickly as possible. Methods like Run, Hide, Fight do not tell the civilians where to run, and messaging systems that attempt this are often thwarted by the shooter’s movement. A dynamic system is needed to track the shooter’s location and communicate to people how to best escape. Dynamic escape signs have been useful for improving trust and egress time during a fire. Similar smart signs could be used to respond to the shooter, updating to show safe egress routes, as well as shut down certain hallways when the shooter is within line of sight. This method has been implemented within a Unity virtual reality environment and will be tested in the future to validate its usefulness.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 1932033
- PAR ID:
- 10487355
- Publisher / Repository:
- Sage
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting
- Volume:
- 64
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2169-5067
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1736 to 1739
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1071181320641421
