The impact of security countermeasures on human behavior during active shooter incidents

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.

Students' evacuation behavior during an emergency at schools: A systematic literature review

“…Secondly, the effects of the built environment on students' evacuation behavior have been studied by several scholars [26,73]. Thirdly, the geometric features of schools and classroom layouts have been explored in combination with individuals' characteristics and their interactions [11,[74][75][76]. This category's most widely applied methodologies are agent-based modeling, cellular automata, and equation-based modeling.…”

The field of human building interaction for convergent research and innovation for intelligent built environments

“…3). The study also revealed the importance of building and social context such that teachers concerned more for others' safety than office workers 70 . These explorations reveal the necessity of customizing building design and operations to provide resilient solutions to extreme events for different users, which can be accomplished using virtual reality.…”

“…In the field of HBI, building operations should consider incorporating technology and human performance in day-to-day resource management, such as for the improvement of HVAC and other physical building operations, as well as improving wayfinding activities to manage efficiency in human mobility within busy environments 18 . It is also vital that HBI research consider support for building operations for extreme scenario responses such as fire accidents 69 or violent attacks 70 .…”

“…Building design can impact the behaviors of building occupants. For example, security countermeasures in a building have influenced participants’ response time and decisions in an active shooter incident where participants responded to the emergency in virtual offices and schools 70 (Fig. 3 ).…”

The double Burden of Stressful Life Events among professional nurses: public mass shootings during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Public mass shootings are a speci c kind of gun violence, de ned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as three or more people being killed in a single incident [10,11] that impacts the daily lives and mental health of people in the community. Another study de ned an unpredictable shooting situation as a life-threatening, stressful event that affects lives in multiple ways [12].…”