Battelle unveils active Shooter Response system.

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin
• Position: Global Defense

Battelle has developed a system that can notify police and security forces within moments of the first shots fired during an active shooter situation.

Analysis conducted by the company showed that delays in notifying law enforcement and human errors during such incidents "are really the things that allow shootings to go on too long and have too high of a human toll," said Ed Jopeck, business manager for critical infrastructure security and resilience at Battelle.

During the chaos of an active shooting, it can sometimes take several minutes before police are called. Further, information relayed to law enforcement can often be incorrect, such as the address of the building or which floor the shooting is happening on, he said.

To help police officers receive the information they need right away, Battelle developed the SiteGuard Active Shooter Response system. Sensors placed inside a building can listen for gunfire, and when detected will dispatch information via voice alerts or text messages to a designated security professional or automatically call 911, Jopeck said.

An extremely loud noise, like the sound of a hammer hitting a nail, isn't enough to trigger the sensor, he said. The system's algorithm measures "against a huge number of data points across the...