An Agent-Based Aggression De-escalation Training Application for Football Referees

摘要

An ongoing problem associated with sports such as football is the regular occurrence of aggressive behavior against referees. Campaigns and meetings for players and football clubs that are organized by the Dutch football federation must reduce aggression on the pitch. To support referees, this paper introduces a mobile application that simulates a football related environment for referees to train with aggression de-escalation. It replicates an aggressive scenario between football player (agent) and referee (user), in which the referee must approach appropriately to decrease the aggression level of the agent. A preliminary evaluation pointed out that the application has potential to be used as a training instrument for football referees.