Korea is regarded as one of the safest countries in the world. Behind such a glorious title lies the various efforts of the Korean police who struggle with various crimes and security issues to protect the country.

But with the rapidly changing public security and new and varied methods of crime, the citizens are growing more nervous while the police are finding it harder to respond.

Various education methods were employed thus far the reduce the dangers to police officers, but the safety accident rate is still 45% or above and they are still exposed to various external accidents including attacks.

The government is now actively investing in the procurement of the police budget and the advancement of the training environment for better investigative capacity, improved response capacity for new crimes, etc. One of the key points of that investment is the modernization of training.

With Digital New Deal 2.0, police training is evolving to the metaverse platform. The metaverse, though it has always been a hot topic, has never been applied to actual education or traning before. Now, through metaverse training centers, it is approaching closer to our lives.

With the advancement of the public peace capacity is the goal, the National Police Agency will be holding a testbed building project with the Naviworks consortium for complex terror response education & training based on XR. The scale is the largest yet in the nation. The project is worth KRW 10 billion and will be based on the metaverse, which connects virtual worlds with the real world. This means that the actual training centers will be connected with a virtual training world through on/offline means.

VTB-X (Virtual Training Block), the state-of-the-art virtual training platform provided by Naviworks, will allow trainees to use MR hololenses and tangible devices to listen to briefings of their missions in a training facility with an XR world built. The police officers will then experience various scenarios in which the trainees can interact with each other and the content for their training. Such training is controlled in real time, and automatic analysis is performed. The saved training results will be managed with a customized, data-based educational curriculum. Such processes allow officers to grow their response capacity to their full potential.

Meta training centers will become the standard for complex training systems, with 2 mid-sized training centers, 1 large training center, 1 complex training center, and two vehicular training centers being built in 18 cities and provinces in the country for the next five years.

The Naviworks consortium, selected through fierce competition, have been formed from the representatives of Korea's IT industry. The metaverse platform and state-of-the-art training center-building company Naviworks (the biggest in the country) will oversee the project.

Other participants include WYSIWYG Studios who worked with Netflix and Disney to participate in distinguished works such as Space Sweepers, the Marvel Series, etc., SK Tech, which has manufactured specialized vehicles for national defense/public institutions for 35 years, the education & training/evaluation model and scenario design company BPS, Korea’s largest AI research center KAIST, and KIST Korea Institute of Science and Technology which leads the race to maximize the realism of human factor-based training.

As this is composed of the greatest consortium in which institutions, universities, and industries cooperate, there will likely be a true digital conversion into the metaverse world of Korea's police training center platform. We look forward into a future of advanced K-cops where both citizens and police are safe.

Naviworks is known to have accomplished a grand slam by building a training system for the major national institutions of the country such as national defense (army/navy/air force), firefighting, maritime police, National Police Agency, etc.

Son Chi-bae, Journalist soncba@dt.co.kr

Source: http://www.dt.co.kr/contents.html?article_no=2021072802109923645006&ref=naver