School Shooting Simulator ‘EDGE’ By US Government Aimed At Teachers

The Department of Homeland Security has recently announced a game-like multiplayer that simulates various shootings. Called “Enhanced Dynamic Geo-Social Environment” (EDGE), the software is targeted at first responders and other professionals, so they will know how to respond to situations when active shooters attack.

“EDGE” is built on the Unreal Engine, and it was made with the goal of providing a simulation tool that would help in training people respond to challenging scenarios pertaining to shooting incidents. The multiplayer simulates emergencies in a virtual sandbox environment for first responders, but a current expansion is being developed for teachers.

According to the Department of Homeland Security’s website, “EDGE” currently simulates an active shooter incident at a local hotel, so it has been made available to first responder agencies for training purposes. Thus, fire, law enforcement and medical emergency services can now utilize the simulator so they could experience and gain insights on how to effectively strategize to overcome the dangerous situation.

Next year, an expansion will go live, and this second scenario will focus on mass school shootings. Gizmodo has learned that the second scenario will feature game-like systems like first-person interactions, digital avatars and whatnot. The end goal for the expansion is to provide teachers with the right virtual environment where they could hone their skills and educate themselves on how to properly react to armed attackers on school premises.

In the school shooting simulator, teachers will be asked to move their students to safety while an armed assailant is roaming the different parts of the school. The attacker in the virtual environment is programmed to kill indiscriminately, so it is up to the teachers to lead their students and everyone to a safe location.

Eurogamer reports that in order for the engineering team to make the school shooting simulator believable, they used data like dispatch audio from shooting incidents at Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech. The details added may be grim and disturbing, but they are needed to make the learning process in the software authentic.

“The more experience you have, the better your chances of survival are. So this allows you to practice and have multiple experiences [and] know what works and what doesn’t work,” one of the chief engineers behind the simulator, Tamara Griffith, said. "[Teachers] did not self-select into a role where they expect to have bullets flying near them. Unfortunately, it's becoming a reality, and so we want to give them that chance to understand what options are available to them and what might work well for them."