HomeAbout SRAMembersEventsNewsletterJournalsOpportunitiesResourcesContact

Back to 2008 Meeting Main Page

Society For Risk Analysis Annual Meeting 2008

Risk Analysis: the Science and the Art

Session Schedule & Abstracts

* Disclaimer: All presentations represent the views of the authors, and not the organizations that support their research. Please apply the standard disclaimer that any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations in abstracts, posters, and presentations at the meeting are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other organization or agency. Meeting attendees and authors should be aware that this disclaimer is intended to apply to all abstracts contained in this document. Authors who wish to emphasize this disclaimer should do so in their presentation or poster. In an effort to make the abstracts as concise as possible and easy for meeting participants to read, the abstracts have been formatted such that they exclude references to papers, affiliations, and/or funding sources. Authors who wish to provide attendees with this information should do so in their presentation or poster.

Common abbreviations

M3-J Progress in Thinking About Security Risk Analysis Issues Room: Hancock   2:00-3:30 PM

Chair(s): William McGill

M3-J.1  14:00  An Interagency Analysis of Terrorism Risk Assessment Disclosure. bagby JW*; Pennsylvania State University   jbagby@ist.psu.edu Abstract: Provisions of at least three laws (Export Administrationt, Arms Export Control, Foreign Assistance ) require the Secretary of State to designate State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST) currently the five SSTs are: Syria, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Sudan. Various SST restrictions on U.S. government assistance and U.S. firms constrain export controls and finance. Other nations also impose terrorism risks for U.S. interests but are not yet designated SSTs including risks to U.S. companies’ direct & indirect business activities. The SEC's Reg. SK generally requires publicly-traded companies to disclosure “risk factors” for investor decisions (investment, financial & operational risks). The SEC’s Office of Global Security Risk monitors such disclosures for “material” information regarding global security risks, generally assessed under the probability-magnitude calculus. A three week pilot web tool project in the summer of 2007 experienced a deluge of 150,000 queries, most focused on Iran. The SEC is now considering a requirement of XBRL data tagging of terrorism risk disclosures to facilitate immediate access by investors and securities/financial analysts. The SEC project is another example of interagency risk assessment: it focuses through the financial disclosure system, it reveals a continuing struggle between investor demands for transparency and publicly-traded companies’ reluctance to reveal confidences, and it raises issues of optimal risk assessment methodologies depending on the assessment’s audience. This presentation reviews these public policy issues from several perspectives: optimal political and terrorism risk analysis methods, financial market efficiency and investor rights, private-sector secrecy in national security contexts, IT diffusion in eGovernment applications.

M3-J.2  14:20  Risk Assessment and the Terrorist: Current and Future Directions for Research. Horgan J*; Penn State University   jgh11@psu.edu Abstract: Given the scale of challenges posed by the threat of terrorism and the perpetually limited resources available to counter terrorism, there is at least widespread agreement on the urgent need to find ways to prioritize and synchronize the use of those resources. With this in mind, the creation of empirically valid risk assessment models for aspects of terrorist behavior is likely to be a useful enterprise. To date, however, there has been little systematic study of the specific relationship between risk and the terrorist. This has been evident in a variety of settings, ranging from prison to operational contexts. Consequently, there is both a lack of knowledge about the basic underlying issues and a lack of clear guidelines to help guide practice in the management of terrorist behavior as well as the mitigation of accompanying threats. This paper explores and discusses a series of issues related to the current and future research on the development of risk assessment procedures. In particular, a case is made for the greater consideration for the role of psychology in the development of risk assessment tools that may prove useful tool in enabling prioritization in a number of critical operational areas.

M3-J.3  14:40  Just How Confident Are You In Your Analysis?: The Role of Analytic Confidence in Evidence-Based Terrorism Risk Assessments. McGill WL*; The Pennsylvania State University   wmcgill@ist.psu.edu Abstract: When presenting their findings to decision makers, risk and intelligence analysts are often challenged by the question "just how confident are you in your results?" In fact, the expression of analytic confidence in intelligence assessments is considered to be so important that congress made it a requirement per he Intelligence Reform and Prevention of Terrorism Act of 2004. Most intelligence assessments are evidence based, where sparse information of oftentimes imperfect reliability is combined with reasoning and assumptions to form judgments of what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen in the future. Much of the terrorism risk assessment problem is of this same character, where the risk analyst is leverage the current state of knowledge of terrorism, systems vulnerabilities and response in light of available information to make reasoned arguments about a decision maker’s exposure to risk. What is lacking, however, is effective guidance on how to make statements about analytic confidence. This presentation will talk about the role of analytic confidence in evidence-based risk and intelligence analysis, to include its definition, how it differs from statistical confidence and subjective confidence, and proposes strategies for its assessment. A few new ideas will also be offered, such as conservative discounting of judgments, to demonstrate how the quantification of confidence can be included as part of an evidence-based risk assessment.

M3-J.4  15:00  Observations on the Importance of Risk Communication in Managing Homeland Security Risk. Ross RG*; Department of Homeland Security   bob.ross@dhs.gov Abstract: Effective Risk Communications, in the fullest possible sense, are essential for managing risks that are as complicated, diverse, unfamiliar and potentially serious as those found within the realm of homeland security. Unfortunately, homeland security risk managers, perhaps due to a too narrow understanding of what “risk communications” means, have not been effective in communicating about homeland security risks. Among the consequences of that communications failure, government authorities have been unable to achieve the level of public understanding and trust required for the most beneficial public response to adverse events. More significantly, due to the lack of an effective risk dialogue, emergency response planners have been hamstrung in their planning efforts – they may understand the initiating events for which they are planning but they do not know how subsequent public reactions will enable or frustrate the planned response. This presentation will provide a larger perspective on what Risk Communications should mean in the homeland security context and will show, with specific examples, how intimately risk communications and effective emergency response are linked.

[back to schedule]