2025 Capstone Project by REID Lab 2. Project title: Situational Awareness in Low-Time High-Risk Scenarios
Sponsor: Dr. Tahira Reid Smith
Project Manager: Marc Singer
Frontend Department: Ann Zezyus, Sourajit Karmakar, Seongjin Baek
Backend Department: Kevin Mcknight, Joel Guzman, Abhinav Sama, Anirban Maity
In recent times, we have seen a rise in tragedies caused by misjudgment in high-risk low-time scenarios. From a paramedic deciding whether to administer a life-saving drug without knowing the victim’s allergies to police officers choosing to shoot an unarmed civilian in fear of their safety. Regardless of the real reason behind these decisions, it is apparent that the lack of situational awareness in high-risk low-time scenarios considerably worsens individuals’ decision-making.
However, knowing this correlation, there is yet to exist a surefire tool to enhance situational awareness in order to improve decision-making in these situations. The continued absence of such a tool will only increase the number of tragedies caused by misjudgment and, in turn, the number of lives lost. While the desired solution to this problem is one that encompasses many different scenarios in hopes to enhance situational awareness no matter the circumstance. This project will focus on enhancing the situational awareness of our police departments to circumvent tragedies caused directly by our police force via the creation of an application designed to train and aid officers acknowledge when they are most vulnerable to making a mistake in their decision-making.
The main approach to succeed in this will be to take advantage of the correlation between heightened heart rates and the clouding of judgment that comes with it to notify and, in turn, improve officers’ tolerance to high-risk scenarios by controlling their stress and emotions that may cloud their judgment. We will utilize accredited marksmanship tools and scenarios coupled with heart rate monitors to create a user-friendly app that enables police officers to easily and effectively train and improve their stress management. By the end of this project, the application will offer a practical and cheaper alternative to enhance situational awareness than current training tools most police departments are unable to offer to their officers.