Project In crisis situations, policemen and other emergency workers often face difficult decision making problems. Even though these people usually have clear instructions about how to act, they often have difficulties in making appropriate decisions, due to a combination of factors, including time pressure and heavy emotions. The main goal of the current project is to develop an intelligent system that is able to analyse human decision making processes in stressful circumstances, and analyse the causes of incorrect decisions. In addition, the system will be incorporated in an electronic training environment for emergency workers. In this environment, trainees will be placed in a virtual emergency scenario, in which they have to make difficult decisions, while negative emotions are induced. During the scenario, various existing techniques will be applied to measure their mental state (i.e., stress level and anxiety). This information will then be used as input for the intelligent system, to determine why they made certain incorrect decisions and teach them how to improve this.
Progress 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 01-12-2011: Posterpresentation @ Hersenen en Cognitie: Maatschappelijke Innovatie 17-11-2011: Poster presentation @ Hersenen en Veiligheid: Wetenschappelijk uitdaging voor maatschappelijke innovatie 24-10-2012: Virtuele crisistraining @ Kennislink <link (dutch)> 01-08-2012: 'Measuring Stress-Reducing Effects of Virtual Training Based on Subjective Response' accepted @ ICONIP 2012 06-07-2012: Start development virtual reality in domain of public transport with IC3D Media 15-06-2012: Project presentation @ NVK congress 2012 23-05-2012: Project presentation @ NSCR - Brown Bag Lunch 14-05-2012: Project presentation @ VU University - WAI 22-02-2012: Project presentation @ GVB Amsterdam 10-12-2013: Guest lecture at SIKS PhD course <link> 25-11-2013: Project presentation at VU University - WAI 16-08-2013: 'Physiological and subjective response to injustice: the effects of unjust evaluations on physiological responses and subjective experiences' accepted @ HAI 2013 10-07-2013: 'Learning Emotion Regulation Strategies: a Cognitive Agent Model' accepted @ IAT 2013 08-07-2013: 'Effects of Virtual Training on Emotional Response: A Comparison Between Different Emotion Regulation Strategies' accepted @ BHI 2013 14-06-2013: Het hoofd koel houden in crisissituaties @ NWO <link (dutch)> 13-06-2013: Project presentation @ NVK congress 2013 17-12-2014: Charlotte Gerritsen appears in an article of the Volkskrant (Dutch), where virtual training is put forward as a solution for agression in public transport. <link (dutch)> 15-12-2014: 'The Effect of Simulated Threat on Task Performance during Emotion Recognition' accepted @ HCII 2015 04-12-2014: Poster presentation and demo at NIBC Brain Product Day <link> 14-11-2014: Guest lecture at UvA - Technology for Games course 19-10-2014: 'Adaptive Training for Aggression De-escalation' accepted @ ALIA 2014 09-09-2014: 'Towards Virtual Training of Emotion Regulation' accepted @ Brain Informatics: Brain Data Computing and Health Studies 13-06-2014: Invited talk at USCKI Incognito student symposium <link> 18-05-2014: 'Agent-Based Simulation as a Tool for the Design of a Virtual Training Environment' accepted @ IAT 2014 16-05-2014: Symposium on Virtual Reality and Physiological Measurements for Training and Therapy @ TU Delft <link> 07-02-2014: Three papers accepted @ HCII 2013 28-01-2014: 'Evoking and Measuring Arousal in Game setting' accepted @ Gamedays 2014 23-04-2015: Tibor Bosse appears in an article in Het Parool, about the evaluation study on simulation-based training of tram conductors that we are currently conducting in the context of the STRESS project.<link (dutch)> 07-04-2015: Jeroen de Man appears in an article of Vrij Nederland, where the STRESS project provides 'a solution' for aggression in public transport. An in-depth part based on this article is published on de Oplossers. <link (dutch)> 09-04-2015: Evaluation experiment started at GVB Amsterdam; conductors will be using the STRESS training software for 4 weeks. 01-28-2015: 'Are Aggressive Agents as Scary as Aggressive Humans?' accepted @ AAMAS 2015 02-29-2016: Jeroen de Man successfully defended his PhD thesis, entitled 'Measuring and modeling negative emotions for virtual training'. <link>
Publications 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Bosse, T., Gerritsen, C., and Man, J. de, An Intelligent System for Aggression De-escalation Training. In: Proceedings of the 22nd European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI'16. IOS Press, 2016. <pdf> Bosse, T. and Gerritsen, C., Towards Serious Gaming for Communication Training - A Pilot Study with Police Academy Students. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment. Springer Verlag, 2016. <pdf> Bosse, T., Gerritsen, C., and Man, J. de, Evaluation of a Virtual Training Environment for Aggression De-escalation. In: Proceedings of Game-On 2015. Eurosis, 2015. <pdf> Bosse, T. and Provoost, S., Integrating Conversation Trees and Cognitive Models within an ECA for Aggression De-escalation Training. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems, PRIMA'15. Springer Verlag, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, 2015. <pdf> Bosse, T. and Provoost, S., On Conversational Agents with Mental States. In: W.-P. Brinkman et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA'15. Springer Verlag, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 9238, 2015, pp. 60-64. <pdf> Blankendaal, R.A.M., Bosse, T., Gerritsen, C., Jong, T. de, and Man, J. de, Are Aggressive Agents as Scary as Aggressive Humans? In: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, AAMAS'15. ACM Press, 2015, pp. 553-561. <pdf> Bosse, T. and Schnitfink, K., The Effect of Simulated Threat on Task Performance during Emotion Recognition. In: D. Harris (Ed.), Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics, Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI'15. Springer Verlag, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 9174, 2015, pp. 107-116. <pdf> Bosse, T., Gerritsen, C., Man, J. de, and Tolmeijer, S., Adaptive Training for Aggression De-escalation. In: C.J. Headleand et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Artificial Life and Intelligent Agents Symposium, ALIA'14. Springer Verlag, Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol. 519, 2015, pp. 80-93. <pdf> Bosse, T., Gerritsen, C., Man, J. de, and Treur, J., Towards Virtual Training of Emotion Regulation. Brain Informatics: Brain Data Computing and Health Studies. Springer Verlag, pp. 27-37, 2014. <pdf> Bosse, T., Gerritsen, C.G., and Man, J. de, Agent-Based Simulation as a Tool for the Design of a Virtual Training Environment. In: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology, IAT'14. IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 40-47, 2014. <pdf> Bosse, T., Gerritsen, C.G., Man, J. de, and Stam, M., Inducing Anxiety through Video Material. In: HCI International 2014 - Posters' Extended Abstracts. Springer Verlag, pp. 301-306, 2014. <pdf> Bosse, T. and Provoost, S., Towards Aggression De-escalation Training with Virtual Agents: A Computational Model. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI'14. Springer Verlag, pp. 375-387, 2014. <pdf> Cusveller, J.J., Gerritsen, C., and Man, J. de, Evoking and Measuring Arousal in Game setting. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Serious games, Gamedays'14, Springer Verlag, pp. 165-174, 2014. <pdf> Man, J. de, Analysing emotional video using consumer EEG hardware. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI'14. Springer Verlag, pp. 729-738, 2014. <pdf> Gerritsen, C.G., Man, J. de, and Meij, J. van der, Physiological and subjective response to injustice: the effects of unjust evaluations on physiological responses and subjective experiences. In: Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Human Aspects in Ambient Intelligence, HAI'13. IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 179-182, 2013. <pdf> Bosse, T., Gerritsen, C.G., Man, J. de, and Treur, J., Learning Emotion Regulation Strategies: A Cognitive Agent Model. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology, IAT'13. IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 245-252, 2013. <pdf> Bosse, T., Gerritsen, C.G., Man, J. de, and Treur, J., Effects of Virtual Training on Emotional Response: A Comparison Between Different Emotion Regulation Strategies. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Brain and Health Informatics, BHI'13. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 21-31, 2013. <pdf> Bosse, T., Gerritsen, C., Man, J. de, and Treur, J, Measuring Stress-Reducing Effects of Virtual Training Based on Subjective Response. In: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, ICONIP'12. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Springer Verlag, pp. 322-330, 2012 <pdf>
People dr. T. Bosse prof.dr. H. Elffers dr.mr. C. Gerritsen J. de Man M.Sc. prof.dr. J. Treur dr. Tibor Bosse Assistant Professor VU University Amsterdam Personal page prof.dr. Henk Elffers Full Professor Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement / VU University Amsterdam Personal page dr.mr. Charlotte Gerritsen Postdoc Researcher Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement / VU University Amsterdam Personal page Jeroen de Man M.Sc. Promovendus VU University Amsterdam Personal page prof.dr. Jan Treur Full Professor VU University Amsterdam Personal page The following students also contributed to this research project: Roland Alpherts (bachelor Lifestyle Informatics), Romy Blankendaal (honours Lifestyle Informatics), Jeltsje Cusveller (bachelor Criminology), Floor Eigenhuis (honours Lifestyle Informatics), Tessa de Jong (honours Lifestyle Informatics), Monika Kremer (honours Lifestyle Informatics), Jelmer Langbroek (bachelor Lifestyle Informatics), Justin van der Meij (bachelor Criminology), Jasper Pardijs (bachelor Lifestyle Informatics), Auke de Peuter (bachelor Computer Science), Simon Provoost (master Artificial Intelligence), Douwe Schalkwijk (bachelor Criminology), Koen Schnitfink (bachelor Lifestyle Informatics), Marco Stam (bachelor Criminology), Nicolette Stassen (bachelor Lifestyle Informatics), Suzanne Tolmeijer (honours Lifestyle Informatics), Pau Prat Torella (bachelor Computer Science), Willeke van Vught (bachelor Lifestyle Informatics), Ganna van der Weij (bachelor Criminology)
Partners Scientific Financial Societal Agent Systems Research, VU University NSCR NWO NIHC Politieacademie GVB TNO IC3D Media

Simulation-based Training of Resilience in Emergencies and Stressful Situations