A Novel Way of Using Simulations to Support Urban Security Operations

Abstract

The growing importance of security operations in urban terrain has triggered many attempts to address the perceived gaps in the readiness of security forces for this type of combat. One way to tackle the problem is to employ simulation techniques. Simulations are widely used to support both mission rehearsal and mission analysis, but these two applications tend to be seen as distinctly separate. We argue that integrating them in a unified framework can bring significant benefits for end-users. We perform a structured walk-through of such a unified system, in which a novel approach to integration through the behaviour cloning enabled the system to capture the operational knowledge of security experts, which is often difficult to express verbally. This capability emerged as essential for the operation of the integrated system. We also illustrate how the interplay between the system components for the mission analysis and mission rehearsal is realized.