JOINT ACTIVE SHOOTER PROTECTION AND RESPONSE (JASPR) SCENARIO MODELING AND ANALYSIS IN SUPPORT OF FORCE PROTECTION

Abstract

The Joint Active Shooter Protection and Response (JASPR) is a DoD-proposed active shooter defeat system, designed to detect an active shooting, alert first responders, reduce response time, activate automatic door locks preventing further targeting by the active shooter and, as a result, decrease the number of lives lost during the shooting. Active shooter defeat systems have been sparsely studied in the literature, and JASPR has not yet been widely demonstrated to be effective. This research uses an agent-based model to compare lives lost during an active shooting with and without a JASPR system present. This research models how many total deaths there are, on average, according to the active shooter’s choice of entrance location into a simulated building, shooter probability of hit, shooter firing rate, whether the shooter suicides at a random interval after the first shot, response time of first responders, number of bystanders in the vicinity of an active shooting, and whether a JASPR system is present. Analysis of the model results indicate that JASPR presence, shooter’s choice of entrance location into the building, and whether the shooter suicides were the most critical in determining how many total lives were lost across 45,000 model replications. The results of this research are intended to help decision makers prioritize where and how an active shooter defeat system such as JASPR might be best deployed.