SHOTPROS

TRAIN – DECIDE – ACT. Horizon 2020 research project SHOTPROS radically changes decision making and acting performance of European police officers under stress and in high-risk situations by developing new, Virtual Reality (VR)- enhanced training methods. The SHOTPROS project has started with the kick-off event in May 2019. A team of 13 European partners from high-ranked research institutions, business companies and international Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) cooperates for 3 years on the project. With the help of Virtual Reality (VR) trainings, SHOTPROS will train first responders’ decision making and acting capabilities under stress and in high risk situations to fight crime and terrorism. Better Decision Making and Acting Performance enhanced by VR-Training The project has created Human Factors Model for Decision Making and Acting under Stress and in High Risk Situations (DMA-SR). This model is vital to understand how decisions in the presence of diverse stress cues are made and it will be evaluated and validated by practitioners in the course of the project. For this purpose, the project will develop a human factor-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 situations in order to improve DMA-SR performance. Knowledge exchange and European standardization on Virtual Reality training During the project, a pan-European network among international LEAs is established in order to transfer knowledge gained in the project and to spread the results within the European Security Network. Furthermore, strategies and toolkits for policy makers will be derived from the project results and take into consideration policy goals and identified policy questions and problem areas. The toolkit compiles materials that are relevant to policy strategies and decisions and will be developed further by the Network as a work in progress, reacting to current policy questions and issues and different situations in national or European contexts. First achievements and outcomes of SHOTPROS In the first year of SHOTPROS, the Consortium has established a solid basis towards achieving the project objectives. Comprehensive requirement workshops were conducted with all LEA partners to understand the wants and needs regarding (VR) training of the European police. Also, a large scale analysis of existing training curricula has been performed and validated by site-visits at all LEAs to identify “best practice” trainings. Based on these findings, a DMA-SR model and a research agenda for validation has been developed. Moreover, SHOTPROS has conducted several large-scale studies with practitioners to compare VR training with real-life training and to measure stress-levels in the training. Within the first year of the project, SHOTPROS has received a lot of positive feedback from practitioners, the media and policy-makers.