An Architectural Design for the Use of Artificial Intelligence and Biometrics to Harden Campus Environments to Mitigate Mass Shooting Incidents

Mass shootings in the United States have become a persistent and distressing phenomenon that demands urgent attention, understanding, and mitigation. In the recent past decades, a perturbing number of mass shootings have taken place in the U.S., with an alarming number of them taking place in higher institutions. Between 2005 and 2022, an 18-year period, the average number of mass shootings is 5.7 with 45.3 average fatalities. So far, within the first quarter of 2023, there have been 9 mass shootings with 55 fatalities. Although efforts have been invested in mitigating the number of casualties during active mass shooting incidents, however, the more prudent strategy of prevention has not gotten the deserved attention. In this paper, we present the architectural design of a system that uses both artificial intelligence and biometrics to mitigate the potential for an individual to effectively perpetuate a mass shooting on campus. In the proposed system design, the ingresses to exposed buildings and their classrooms are protected by biometric identification, verification, and validation, and also using AI-based machine learning to verify whether an individual possesses a firearm. The system incorporates several monitoring and reporting components that are used to interface with security, enforcement, and administrative offices that need to respond to threats.