A Thompson Rivers University associate professor is hoping to create a system that would help police analyze a location for potential ‘lone wolf’ terrorist attacks.

Andrew Park is trying to use 3D simulations to identify locations where attacks could take place at concerts, sporting events, and parades.

He has been working with 20-year-old Kathik Vedantham, a student at the National Institute of Technology in Hamirpur, India, for the last two and a half months.

Park tells Radio NL the focus is on those mass gatherings.

“Just a few weeks ago, there was a shooting instance during the Raptors championship parade,” he said. “We want to use this project to take preventative action to protect innocent civilians.”

Vedantham joined the project from Mitacs Globalink, a Canadian not-for-profit internship program which helps line up international students with research positions in Canada for a summer.

He says the project has very good social benefits.

“We do this basically by selecting an area that you want to protect in the real world. We convert that into 3D space, then we do a 3D analysis of environment, so we are trying to find a spot that provides the most accessible range and are there some factors like how lone wolf terrorists selects a spot and stuff like that.”

Park notes the pair have also been collaborating with a Vancouver police officer.

“We got some feedback from them and they are very interested in our project,” he told NL. “We hope that our project can be mature enough to be used by them for events like music concerts or big sports events for public safety.”

Park has been working on his project since the shootings in Las Vegas in 2017, and he hopes to be done later this summer before Vedantham goes back home to India.