The XXI century has seen a growth in the number, diversity, and aggressiveness of terror attacks and other security threats that calls for methods to improve preparedness of both counter-terrorism forces and the general public. Preventing or responding to security threats requires knowledge, fast decision-making, and psychological skills that are difficult or impossible to develop with traditional methods.
Our 3D solutions allow trainees to live experientially the situations that precede, characterize or follow security threat scenarios. Moreover, they add gamification elements to the simulations to engage users, increasing attention, learning and frequency of rehearsal. Serious games play a strategic role in facing the well-known problem of lack of attention and motivation towards traditional preparedness materials in the general public as well as in trainees.
Our approach can cover different types of scenarios (active shooter, bombing, knife attack, hostage taking, biochemical threat, ...), which require different procedures by counter-terrorism forces as well as different protective behaviors by company employees or the general public.
AVIETRA’s co-founders have worked with first responders organizations (Emergency Medical Services, Firefighters, Civil Defense) to create training applications based on serious games that simulate terror attacks, and with security experts about violent crime. The first image in this section shows a serious game that simulates a major bombing incident in a train station. The focus of the training is on self-protection and evacuation after the blast. The second image shows a system created for the Intesa Sanpaolo Bank Group, which is used to train bank employees in dealing with armed robberies.
A scientific study of our solution in the international journal Computers in Human Behavior (published by Elsevier), has highlighted positive effects not only on users' learning but also on psychological factors (risk perception and self-efficacy) that are important in facing threats in the real world.