Crisis Architecture

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Jeff White

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This article was posted on the War on the Rocks site. While it discusses ways of physically hardening public spaces I think there are some ideas in the article that would be applicable to our private property.

https://warontherocks.com/2019/12/c...ail&utm_term=0_8375be81e9-fa44f2c1c0-82921305


The Eight Principles of Crisis Architecture

Crisis architecture focuses on designing structures in the built environment in a manner that increases the likelihood that individuals will survive an active aggressor incident. Schools, government buildings, houses of worship, commercial structures, and other potential targets can utilize its principles to increase survivability. The concept is modeled around eight principles. The implementation of any one principle would be beneficial, but the full integration of all eight provides the most robust physical defense.

1) Enable Creation of Distance: Structures should allow people in the building to move rapidly from one area to another, which is critical in the initial moments of an active aggressor incident. There should be numerous connecting hallways between parts of a building and multiple staircases between floors, all of which facilitate short transit times. The Pentagon is a building that does this well: Though it is the world’s largest office building, the average time to walk between any two places inside is only seven minutes because of numerous internal corridors and stairwells. Creation of distance has four purposes: to allow potential victims to quickly flee from the immediate vicinity of an attacker, to enable rapid movement to a building exit, to facilitate access to a shelter-in-place location, and to decrease law enforcement reaction time.

2) Allow Safe Exit from Numerous Points in the Building: Integrating numerous exits into the plan for a building will both prevent individuals from becoming trapped in a particular space and ease congestion that occurs when evacuating congested spaces. Standard exits are one way to accomplish this goal, but non-standard exit points, such as pop-out windows, emergency rope ladders for upper story windows, and subterranean exits, are part of a comprehensive blueprint. In a classroom during the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech, a professor braced the door, allowing ten of the 16 students in the room to exit by the windows and drop into the bushes below.

3) Incorporate Angles to Limit a Shooter’s Line of Sight: An attacker with a firearm will normally shoot only what he can see. Public space design should eschew long straight hallways where people have no place to avoid being seen, and rooms where most of the floor area is directly visible from the door. The integration of hallways with a number of turns and visually appealing barriers that limit line of sight can decrease the number of targets a shooter has available at any given time. By providing space where people can avoid being seen, barriers to line of sight increase the amount of time it takes a shooter to locate targets. This time can be used by civilians to exit the building or move to a shelter-in-place location.

In the six minutes of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the shooter killed 17 people and wounded another 17, all without leaving the main hallway. He never entered a classroom because he didn’t need to. He could see and engage every victim either in the hallways or from classroom doors. A design incorporating fewer long corridors with classrooms branching off them might have complicated the aggressor’s ability to target students.

4) Provide Adequate Cover and Concealment: Design elements that provide cover and concealment are central to the crisis architecture paradigm because they facilitate the creation of distance as people move to exit a facility, and provide protection for those who shelter in place. Cover can stop bullets, while concealment only prevents an individual from being seen. Designers wishing to incorporate cover elements could use walls constructed of bullet resistant materials, hardened artistic or structural features (fountains or support beams), or ballistic doors and windows. Non-bullet resistant structural elements (like standard walls or doors) and standard artistic features (such as large plants, half walls, or furnishings) can provide concealment. Another possible concealment technique is using obscuration through a medium like smoke. For example, smoke emitters could be triggered by a nearby gunshot or a responsible party pressing an alarm, as is already in place at some American schools.

During the attack in San Bernardino on Dec. 2, 2015, at least one victim was hit by bullets passing through non-resistant walls. A second was hit when bullets penetrated a non-ballistic glass door. Standard construction and many traditional design features provide insufficient cover and concealment for an active aggressor incident.

5) Enable Rapid Hardening of a Facility: As we noted, the majority of casualties in mass shooter incidents are inflicted in a short amount of time after the attack begins. A design that allows rapid hardening of a facility can alleviate this dynamic. Features that can rapidly harden a structure include pushbutton deadbolts, window coverings that drop when an alarm is triggered, and internal ballistic doors (like existing fire doors) that can be electronically closed. These measures could be controlled individually, such as by teachers who can push a button in their classrooms, or centrally, by a school administrator or security official. Rapid hardening allows a building to maintain its full form and function until defense against an aggressor becomes necessary. When it does, the attacker can be quickly isolated from potential targets.

As we noted earlier, at Sandy Hook Elementary School classrooms could not be locked from the inside: They could be locked only by using keys from the hallway side of the door. The teachers had no ability to harden their rooms, and the consequences were devastating. Had those teachers been able to lock down their rooms when they heard the gunfire, or had an administrator been able to do this centrally, lives may have been saved.

6) Implement “Human-Centered Design” Concepts: Often the victims of active aggressor incidents are untrained and unprepared. These incidents are always chaotic and confusing, and people react instinctively. Innate fight, flight, or freeze responses tend to drive behavior. Human-centered design can help by increasing understanding of the most likely course of action people will take. Buildings using the crisis architecture paradigm should be designed to work with human instincts to maximize safety in a moment of excessive adrenaline and minimal rational thought. There are many creative ways to do this, including using the architectural lines of a building to focus people toward exits, lighting exits in a way that draws attention, and using color and shape to make cover obvious.

A Royal Society Study of neurobiological mechanisms found that “in stressful situations, most people tend to fall back on primary ‘freeze–fight–flight’ tendencies and have great difficulty controlling their actions.” Observations of numerous mass shootings reinforce that, in nearly every case, potential victims’ natural instincts take over. A common reaction is to hide under or behind the closest piece of furniture or to run haphazardly, without a real objective other than escape. By utilizing one natural process in the human brain (the ability to observe natural patterns and environmental indicators) to influence a second (fight, flight, or freeze), design can enhance the instinctive human desire to survive an attack.

7) Training and Design Need to be Mutually Supporting: In cases where people receive active aggressor response training (e.g. schools, some businesses and government facilities), training and architecture should be mutually supporting. For example, if an organization’s active shooter protocol is to shelter in place, the spaces where they are supposed to do so should be built to withstand attempted entry or attack. The doors should have secure locks that can be activated from inside rooms, and the walls should be able to stop bullets. Similarly, if evacuation is the preferred protocol, there needs to be cover and concealment available along routes to multiple exits, and there should be a system that allows individuals to know where the shooter is before they start moving, to prevent them from moving directly into his path.

8) Integrate Systems to Increase the Situational Awareness of First Responders: The efficiency of law enforcement response to an active aggressor situation can be degraded if law enforcement lacks sound information about the location of the attacker, the location and condition of victims, or layout of the building. Builders should install systems that decrease the amount of time it takes for first responders to gain situational awareness, thus decreasing their reaction time. These could include internal gunshot detection technology to relay the position of gunfire, systems to allow victims to report the location of the shooter, and small lights (red/green) near doors and external windows to indicate if somebody in the room is wounded. Building administrators could also give first responders temporary access to security cameras.


This is a snippet from the article. We can incorporate some of these ideas into planning to harden our own dwellings and property.
 
Great posting Jeff... I was long out of police work when Columbine occurred. This new approach looks to me to be an evolution of what was called CPTED in my era (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design). The idea behind CPTED was that everyone involved in planning public and private buildings and open spaces could greatly reduce criminal activity through the design process...

I received the law enforcement version of the training myself. It was also taught to architects, planners, and others in related fields... If it’s still available I’d highly recommend it for anyone making a career in public service and aiming to be a policy maker some day.

Glad to hear that we’re finally looking at the small details in design that might mean the difference between survival and injury or death for ordinary folks caught in an “active shooter" situation.
 
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I think that with modern technology certain things from the article like push button deadbolts and adequate cover and concealment around the safe room could be easily integrated into home defensive preparations.
 
All we, as gun owners, seem to espouse is just how few people have been shot or killed in mass shooting scenarios; so at what costs do all of these additional architectural features come? Who pays the huge amounts; has there been a cost benefit analysis done? Just another way to look at it
 
If taken into account BEFORE any construction starts most of the better crime prevention stuff won’t add much at all to building costs. Trying to modify or improve existing buildings will be so costly that it might be talked about but I doubt much will ever be done...
 
Yeah, I've studied this a good bit. Lots of the stuff done in the initial design doesn't add anything to the costs. And the things that do...well, what would it cost to put a dozen cops in every school or train and arm every teacher?
 
If taken into account BEFORE any construction starts most of the better crime prevention stuff won’t add much at all to building costs. Trying to modify or improve existing buildings will be so costly that it might be talked about but I doubt much will ever be done...
Possibly, but as someone who did construction management, every time you add corners, etc in buildings, it adds a lot of unnecessary costs. Not saying they aren't good ideas, just saying these things WILL add costs - and none of them address the root causes as to why these things happen in the first place.
 
Possibly, but as someone who did construction management, every time you add corners, etc in buildings, it adds a lot of unnecessary costs. Not saying they aren't good ideas, just saying these things WILL add costs - and none of them address the root causes as to why these things happen in the first place.

The positive thing though is that you don't really need to address the root causes (although of course we should) nor even recognize/understand them. The fact is that evil exists in the world and no amount of root cause mitigation will prevent all of it. Really some of this isn't adding extra or unnecessary cost so much as addressing obvious deficiencies that create unnecessary kill zones to begin with. It's not totally free of course but it's a practical solution that's 1) cheaper than many other proposed solutions and 2) doesn't require our two dysfunctional political parties to agree on anything.
 
#1 and #2 are essential for fire safety.

The problem with #3 and #4 is it severely hinders "room clearing." Basically, by creating a nightmare "shoot house" with extensive presence of blind corners and cover/concealment, a criminal shooter is aided in protecting themselves at least as much as their would-be victims are. To be particularly advantageous, use of exclusive access to situational awareness/sensing technology to implement #8 becomes necessary. This can be extremely costly. Small institutional buildings cannot really afford that. For large structures, the cost can be staggering. A friend is working on a large international airport terminal. That thing is already like $3 billion and still going. Even so, I doubt it has all the bells and whistles that one could wish for. #5 seems similarly costly. The reality for a lot of organizations that host gatherings of people for various purposes is the building is often a huge portion of the budget and making it bulletproof is about as financially practical as making our cars bulletproof or bombproof.

An important solution to address these problems is to stop gathering people together into big targets. As a society, we're still handling the physical presence of people with an "economy of scale" mentality that is outdated. The idea of gathering 30 kids into a classroom to process them, or 300 people into a church auditorium, or 3000 people into a concert hall, or 30,000 people into a sports stadium are mostly based on concepts stemming from manufacturing in the industrial revolution. They're all lame.
 
An important solution to address these problems is to stop gathering people together into big targets. As a society, we're still handling the physical presence of people with an "economy of scale" mentality that is outdated. The idea of gathering 30 kids into a classroom to process them, or 300 people into a church auditorium, or 3000 people into a concert hall, or 30,000 people into a sports stadium are mostly based on concepts stemming from manufacturing in the industrial revolution. They're all lame.

Gathering 30 students into a classroom I can see as a type of "economy of scale". But to hear a concert live or see a sporting event live, it seems to me that there isn't really a way to do that other than in a group. And worship is an activity different from private prayer, in fact in some religions a certain number of people are required to be present in order for certain activities to take place.
 
There is no practical way to have tiny groups in a concert hall. It's not financially feasible to have an orchestra play for fifty people at a time. And if you broadcast the performance to various locations then the patrons are listing to a stereo, not a performance.
 
CPTED is still taught as a concept: several of my co workers took the course over the summer.

I agree with an above poster about the nightmare shoothouse with all the angles. In looking at a school, one other thing to consider, besides the cost, is the ability of an administrator to be able to look down the hall and see trouble issues. If there are a lot of blind corners, there are a lot of places for kids to hide the issues they don't want a teacher or administrator to see (drinking, drugs, vaping, etc). One has to weigh those issues as well.
 
Another angle to consider (pun intended) when talking about adding angles, blind corners, etc. is that now you give students little places to do some hanky-panky sort of things. When not in a shooting scenario, those little corners will aid in drug dealing, hinder a teacher /admin from making sure everyone is in class, etc. Modern schools now already look like prisons form the outside - and that started before the onset of school shootings. Now, if it wasn't for the yellow school bus in front, nay folks wouldn't be ab;e to tell the difference. One solution is to reverse the way school are populated; i.e. make high schools smaller in student population while elementary schools can be large. Of course, all of the sports folks would scream at that.....
Smaller school and smaller classes and maybe some of the problems that cause these things will be abated or at least eased. And MAYBE with those smaller schools and classes, kids will get out of high school able to read, write and do some math...............
 
I never intended to suggest prohibiting people from attending large gatherings. We're a free people. My point was that our culture puts too much value on "mass quantities" just for the sake of mass quantities. There are churches that measure their worth and growth by body count. And there are bands/promoters that pack bigger and bigger venues for their own profit and not for a better experience for those in attendance. Indeed, there are people that are attracted to big gatherings just for the "hype."

I have been to a costly performance of a world-famous big city orchestra where they did indeed use sound reinforcement because they would not have been loud enough for the venue. I might as well have been listening to a stereo.

As for sporting events... go ahead and participate in that mania. It's not for me. 60,000 people in a stadium, sitting in nose-bleed seats for $500 per family to watch tiny ants on the field making $50,000 an hour to play with a ball? Yeah, sorry, that's insanity. I'd rather watch a kid's game at the sand lot any day.

Again, what I'm saying is not that people must change their ways for my sake, but that people should question them introspectively and consider whether there are better ways. I home school. I attend a small church and have friends in lots of churches and house churches. I enjoy concerts in small halls and garage bands when they're still in the garage. I go to games at the little city park. I have security concerns, but nothing that I cannot be expected to address to a reasonable level myself. I've been to those big events with all their hype and I don't appreciate the way they often force the disablement of a free people to provide for their own security and then hire the lowest bidder to fulfill a contract to do it for them.
 
Jeff Cooper at his Gunsite Ranch did just what the OP has suggested and there was a documentary on TV regarding how Jeff set his home up narrated by Jeff himself.
 
Self-defense focused architecture is certainly available but the argument of feasible vs possible will be a big part of the picture. The contemporary world is so different than when I was a child, teenager and college student. We went from packet switching to global networks in what seems an instant. Our world is modern and small now and its people apparently require continually stronger stimuli to stave off what is sometimes earth-shaking negativity.

I don't think the answer, if there is an answer, lies in a locked door but rather in parental control and a sense of responsibility.
 
Jeff Cooper at his Gunsite Ranch did just what the OP has suggested and there was a documentary on TV regarding how Jeff set his home up narrated by Jeff himself.
And that can work great for someone's individual home; but not necessarily for a multi-million dollar school or mall
 
And that can work great for someone's individual home; but not necessarily for a multi-million dollar school or mall
That’s why I posted the article. To give ideas on things one might use in their home.

Discussion of designing public spaces to be more defensible is right on the line of being off topic.
 
Making a fortress of your home is not a new idea. There was even more reason to do so in the medieval period. Moats and turrets. We're an infinitely better-armed people than any other period; ancient to today. We've got guns, alarm systems that boggle the mind, cameras, safe rooms, motion-sensor lights, guard dogs, guards, gravel outside our windows, morning news shows that tell us what to do and how to do it and helicopter pads on our roof for a quick getaway.

Unless you are a potentate or Howard Hughes, you are going to have to leave your well-guarded castle sooner or later so what is the point; really? And, why? Why are we so afraid?
 
I don't think we have to build a fortress to help ourselves a bit. There are a lot of common-sense approaches to making a home more secure and they don't even have to involve costly technology or brute-strength materials. I was in a "shoot house" once where someone had thought to place a flower vase with a reflective surface as the centerpiece on the table in the middle of a room. Things like that or mirrors on the wall can allow us to see around corners, not just when we're "clearing rooms" with a CQB carbine wearing a plate-carrier, but in everyday life. The "tech" solution would be cloud-connected wifi cameras we can pull up on our smart phone. That's cool, but a $2 mirror from a garage sale can fix a blind corner without an IP address.

With respect to residential architectural security features, there are probably at least two categories: perimeter security and interior security. What I just described in the above paragraph would be an interior feature. Perimeter security begins at the property line, there's another layer at the building perimeter, and there can be other layers as well such as "safe rooms." At the outermost layer, we may not need to think "fortress" so much as simply make our property less attractive to opportunistic criminals as other nearby properties. It's not difficult or costly to simply look harder than easier options.

In my neighborhood, daytime break-ins are more likely than night-time. People are at work during the day. My home is always occupied and I benefit from making it look so. The homes in my neighborhood have attached garages with an exterior door to the sideyard/backyard. That door is an easier target than the front door because it's hidden from the street and less robust than the front door. The door frames are just those cheap wood pre-hung jobs and easy to kick-in. The frames can be reinforced with a steel plate or better yet, replaced with a steel door frame and steel door. Keeping the side gate locked so it has to be jumped and installing a camera in that area are both good deterrents. A basic alarm can also help if your household has the discipline to arm and disarm it as necessary.

For personal security, my wife always parks in the garage so confrontations on the driveway less likely. She can drive in and close the door before getting out of the car, and then enter the house from the garage. We don't live in a high-risk neighborhood, but I do wish we had more buffer space between the street and the house.
 
I have been to a costly performance of a world-famous big city orchestra where they did indeed use sound reinforcement because they would not have been loud enough for the venue. I might as well have been listening to a stereo.

I feel bad for you! That's not how art music was meant to be enjoyed. I hope you have opportunities to hear great music in a world-class hall without the need to have amps and speakers!

Sorry for the sidetrack, back to our regularly scheduled discussion!;)
 
Yes, that was precisely my point. Everything in our society is being amplified for a higher body-count, and security is an afterthought. Most people take their safety for granted, and if there's any evidence that it was denied, they're appalled at everyone but the perpetrator as if they had been denied a fundamental entitlement by society itself. People quite literally want to live in Fantasyland where Disney meets all their needs in exchange for surrendering their few liberties. They don't care if everything reaching their senses is "fake" as long as someone else is providing it all.
 
To be fair though most places are pretty safe. The media makes it seem like you're luck to make it to the store and back without getting gunned down but the truth is our society is pretty safe. There are some incidents and a few places where crime is much worse than the norm but overall the rates of murder and other violent crime have dropped steadily over the decades since Roe V Wade. Probably 99.99% of people do see a movie, attend a concert or football game, etc without the event being attacked by a gunman/gunwoman. Mass shootings are still pretty rare so it's not completely unreasonable to think you can go to a basketball game without, say, body armor.

Before you go there, yeah- I do CCW. I've never filed a claim with my car insurance company nor used the fire extinguishers in my home but I still keep them around.;)
 
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