Identifying Factors that Influence Terrorist Decisions and Target Selection
-
Barry C. Ezell
Currently, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) elicits probabilistic judgments from the intelligence community on actions terrorists may take to attack the continental U.S. For example, how likely is the adversary to choose agent ‘x’ over agent ‘y’ or target ‘a’ over target ‘b’? Eliciting these types of judgments is difficult and time consuming. The National Academies and others have suggested that a better approach may be to elicit information on adversary’s preferences, perceptions, and capabilities and use this information to calculate probabilities of interest to DHS. Some terrorist groups are thinking about using weapons of mass destruction (WMD), each with its own values, perceptions of reality, and capabilities. This presentation details the findings on the factors & relationships among factors that lead to a terrorist decision to initiate an attack against the continental U.S as well as target selection. To accomplish this, we assembled international experts in WMD, adversary modeling, political science, terrorism, psychiatry, social sciences as well as experts from national laboratories, the Commonwealth of Virginia State Fusion Center, and Hampton Roads Emergency Management.This paper provides a summary of the findings from an Adaptive Adversary Workshop. In this paper, we provide an overview of the motivation for and design of the workshop as well as 19 emerging themes. The purpose of the workshop was to illicit expert opinions on terrorist decision-making and target selections in an effort to improve our understanding of adversaries (individuals, local/regional groups, transnational groups, states) who may initiate a bioterrorism attack in the form of releasing biological agents upon U.S. interests. Furthermore, these expert opinions are intended to be used to inform Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) models of terrorist networks. These models must be informed or populated with substantive information about the intelligent and adaptive adversary who may initiate an attack. To this end, a conceptual framework, informed broadly by the social sciences community, is intended to capture the terrorists’ motivations, methods, and decision calculi.
©2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Research Article
- Use of Small-Scale Test Data to Enhance Fire-Related Threat, Vulnerability, Consequence and Risk Assessment for Passenger Rail Vehicles
- Strategic Cyber Defense: Which Way Forward?
- Effect of a Marketing Program on Freshman Student Registration for an Emergency Notification System
- Strategic uses of Lessons for Building Collaborative Emergency Management System: Comparative Analysis of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gustav Response Systems
- The Relationship between Turkey's Provinces' Development Levels and Social and Economic Vulnerability to Disasters
- A Review of the Key Legal dynamics of Chinese Military Involvement in Domestic Disaster Relief (MI/DDR)
- Testing Social Vulnerability Theory: A Quantitative Study of Hurricane Katrina's Perceived Impact on Residents living in FEMA Designated Disaster Areas
- If You Can't Trust, Stick to Hierarchy: Structure and Trust as Contingency Factors in Threat Assessment Contexts
- Regional Disaster Risk: Assessment and Mitigation Concepts in an All-Hazards Context
- Evacuation Patterns of Ethnic Groups Under Fire
- Risk Informed Decision Framework for Integrated Evaluation of Countermeasures against CBRN Threats
- The Influence of Politics on Federal Disaster Declaration Decision Delays
- Cross-Sectoral Scanning of Critical Infrastructures: from Functional Differences to Policy-Relevant Similarities
- Identifying Communication Strategies in Cases of Domestic Terrorism: Applying Cultural Context to the Fort Hood Shooting
- The Evolving Role of the Public Information Officer: An Examination of Social Media in Emergency Management
- Structural Dynamics of Organizations during the Evolution of Interorganizational Networks in Disaster Response
- Investigating the Roots of Crisis Management Studies and Outlining Future Trajectories for the Field
- The Multiplicity of Actors Involved in Securing America's Food Imports
- Homeland Security as International Security? The Case for International Relations as Disciplinary Model
- Challenges for Multi-sector Organizations in Tracking and Sheltering Registered Sex Offenders in Disasters
- Communicating H1N1 Risk to College Students: A Regional Cross-Sectional Survey Study
- Cultural Influence on the Implementation of Incident Command System for Emergency Management of Natural Disasters
- Influencing Factors of Emergency Information Spreading in Online Social Networks: A Simulation Approach
- Responding in Crises: A Comparative Analysis of Disaster Responses between Mainland China and Taiwan
- Updating the National Planning Scenarios: Using Wicked Problems and Capability-Based Planning Concepts for Homeland Security
- The 'Titanic Syndrome': Risk and Crisis Management on the Costa Concordia
- Book Reviews
- Review of Freedom and Order: How Democratic Governments Restrict Civil Liberties after Terrorist Attacks - and Why Sometimes They Don't
- Review of National Security Reform: How Commissions Can Drive Change During Crises
- Review of The Four Stages of Highly Effective Crisis Management
- Communication/News
- Public Health's Role in Understanding Community Resilience
- Identifying Factors that Influence Terrorist Decisions and Target Selection
- Opinion
- Emerging Dangers from Direct Botulinum Access and Use
- Failing to Establish a Unified Command in Louisiana During Hurricane Katrina
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Research Article
- Use of Small-Scale Test Data to Enhance Fire-Related Threat, Vulnerability, Consequence and Risk Assessment for Passenger Rail Vehicles
- Strategic Cyber Defense: Which Way Forward?
- Effect of a Marketing Program on Freshman Student Registration for an Emergency Notification System
- Strategic uses of Lessons for Building Collaborative Emergency Management System: Comparative Analysis of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gustav Response Systems
- The Relationship between Turkey's Provinces' Development Levels and Social and Economic Vulnerability to Disasters
- A Review of the Key Legal dynamics of Chinese Military Involvement in Domestic Disaster Relief (MI/DDR)
- Testing Social Vulnerability Theory: A Quantitative Study of Hurricane Katrina's Perceived Impact on Residents living in FEMA Designated Disaster Areas
- If You Can't Trust, Stick to Hierarchy: Structure and Trust as Contingency Factors in Threat Assessment Contexts
- Regional Disaster Risk: Assessment and Mitigation Concepts in an All-Hazards Context
- Evacuation Patterns of Ethnic Groups Under Fire
- Risk Informed Decision Framework for Integrated Evaluation of Countermeasures against CBRN Threats
- The Influence of Politics on Federal Disaster Declaration Decision Delays
- Cross-Sectoral Scanning of Critical Infrastructures: from Functional Differences to Policy-Relevant Similarities
- Identifying Communication Strategies in Cases of Domestic Terrorism: Applying Cultural Context to the Fort Hood Shooting
- The Evolving Role of the Public Information Officer: An Examination of Social Media in Emergency Management
- Structural Dynamics of Organizations during the Evolution of Interorganizational Networks in Disaster Response
- Investigating the Roots of Crisis Management Studies and Outlining Future Trajectories for the Field
- The Multiplicity of Actors Involved in Securing America's Food Imports
- Homeland Security as International Security? The Case for International Relations as Disciplinary Model
- Challenges for Multi-sector Organizations in Tracking and Sheltering Registered Sex Offenders in Disasters
- Communicating H1N1 Risk to College Students: A Regional Cross-Sectional Survey Study
- Cultural Influence on the Implementation of Incident Command System for Emergency Management of Natural Disasters
- Influencing Factors of Emergency Information Spreading in Online Social Networks: A Simulation Approach
- Responding in Crises: A Comparative Analysis of Disaster Responses between Mainland China and Taiwan
- Updating the National Planning Scenarios: Using Wicked Problems and Capability-Based Planning Concepts for Homeland Security
- The 'Titanic Syndrome': Risk and Crisis Management on the Costa Concordia
- Book Reviews
- Review of Freedom and Order: How Democratic Governments Restrict Civil Liberties after Terrorist Attacks - and Why Sometimes They Don't
- Review of National Security Reform: How Commissions Can Drive Change During Crises
- Review of The Four Stages of Highly Effective Crisis Management
- Communication/News
- Public Health's Role in Understanding Community Resilience
- Identifying Factors that Influence Terrorist Decisions and Target Selection
- Opinion
- Emerging Dangers from Direct Botulinum Access and Use
- Failing to Establish a Unified Command in Louisiana During Hurricane Katrina
