Volume 8, Issue 1

The paper is devoted to reviewing the existing means of detecting the transportation of dangerous materials and illicit objects. We analyse the currently available systems, the physical background of the corresponding techniques, and their advantages and limitations. Our purpose is to provide a broad overview of the possibilities in this field and to present our vision of what is the most appropriate response to the challenges of the modern world with respect to the increasing threat of terrorist attacks and illicit transportation of explosives, weapons, Special Nuclear Materials, and illicit narcotic drugs. To meet this objective, we compare various techniques, discuss how they correspond to the current needs, and propose a possible solution to the existing serious problems.

This study presents descriptive data from the 2009 Riks-SOM, a national Swedish public opinion survey (n=1501) on trust in the Swedish public safety answering point (PSAP), 112/SOS Alarm. Of special importance in the study is the trust in light of citizens’ perception of mobile phones as a “lifeline” in everyday life. The main conclusion is that vulnerable groups like citizens with foreign citizenship, citizens in the largest towns of Sweden (Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo), the elderly and people in poorer health have relatively the lowest levels of trust in 112/SOS Alarm. Another conclusion is that a rather large number of individuals, who believe that a mobile phone increases the security in everyday life to a very high degree, also seem to have very high levels of trust in 112/SOS Alarm. The study appears to be the first main public opinion survey on the issue of trust in PSAP in correlation to the view of the mobile phone as a lifeline.

This national-level study of highway-rail crossings and grade-crossing accidents finds significant changes over the last 15 years. Findings include a sizable increase in the number of open highway-rail crossings; a continued decrease in the number of accidents, deaths and injuries at grade crossings since 1996, but an increase in injury and fatality rates; higher number of accidents at gated crossings, though the accident-to-crossing ratio at gated crossings remain low; an overall increase in the rate of accidents involving HAZMAT-carrying vehicles, and a continued high percentage of Amtrak passenger trains involved in accidents and an increase in Amtrak injury and fatality rates. Also, while the federal government continues to take on considerably more regulation and costs, it does so in a difficult policy environment with varying state-level regulation and no clear consensus on the best technology to use given cost considerations. We put forward a two-prong approach: the vertical integration of highway-rail oversight with the Federal government playing a coordinative role and “hotspot” remediation of high-risk crossings.

Hazardous material releases, some with serious consequences, are a common occurrence in the U.S. Of late, the hazards posed by releases caused by terrorist attacks or natural disasters have been of particular concern. Although terrorism directed at hazardous material handling industries within the U.S. has not yet resulted in a significant incident, there is much recent experience with serious accidental releases resulting from natural disasters. Case studies are developed from a number of recent natural disasters and severe weather events that resulted in large releases of hazardous materials. These case studies are used to illustrate parallels between the risks posed by hazardous material releases resulting from terrorism and natural disasters; examples include the presence of a dominant mechanism for physical damage, difficult-to-control and unforeseen scenarios of releases, limited specific regulation of the risks, and a complex and difficult response environment. Hence, lessons learned from previous experience with releases during natural disasters can be used to increase the resilience of industrial facilities and to improve the planning for hazardous material response in the face of terror threats. Routes to improve hazardous material industry preparedness for terror attack and natural disasters include physical hardening of facilities and equipment, utilization of passive safety devices, greater consideration of facility layout and siting, application of inherently safer design principles, and additional legislation at local, state or federal levels.

This study focused on the uniformity of Web sites operated by local emergency management agencies (EMAs) as they pertain to the availability of relevant emergency preparedness and response information. Of the 3,128 counties (or county equivalents) in the United States, we found Internet homepages for 1,612 local EMAs (51.5%). We reviewed each homepage to document the presence (or absence) of nine elements deemed to be essential for effective communications during emergency or disaster situations. Local EMA Web site homepages had a mean of 4.5 (± 1.5) elements. Among the findings, this review revealed that about four out of five (82.3%) of the local EMAs included the agency phone number, more than half (52.0%) provided links to other agencies with emergency preparedness information, and about two in five (38.3%) listed an agency email address. A few more than one in five (21.1%) of the local EMA homepages reviewed allowed visitors to sign up for automatic alerts or notifications. The nine communication elements identified in our study provide a minimal standard for content. We suggest that these results be used as a starting point in developing a uniform template containing the nine homepage elements. Such a template compliments National Incident Management System (NIMS) protocols and can provide a recognizable source of consistent and reliable information for people during emergency or disaster incidents.

The September 2001 terrorist attacks created a high demand for national homeland security policy and action, exactly the result when there have been other major disasters. There are many reasons for the centralization of policy and state and local acceptance of the centralization. However, there is also room for a rebalancing of interests, with a constant push and pull upwards and downwards between the homeland security role and authority of the federal government and that of state and local governments. This article examines the contemporary homeland security federalism and intergovernmental experience. It starts with presenting the underlying basics of federalism and intergovernmental relations for any main policy arena. It then turns to the importance of the national interest in policy centralization and the significant role of focusing events in homeland security’s intergovernmental relations. It next discusses opportunistic federalism and homeland security. The article concludes with factors that buffer federal control—state and local direct interests, implementation of federal policies, and the influence of growing public fiscal austerity.

Common failures in emergency responses could be reduced if response organizations had a more systematic way to incorporate lessons learned from exercises and past events into their plans. Reliability and risk concepts from systems engineering provide one framework for improving emergency response planning, but it is unclear if sufficient data exists to apply these techniques. This study combines a text analysis of 70 after action reports (AARs) with a failure mode effects and consequences analysis (FMECA). This approach provides a mechanism to connect the AAR process with efforts to improve emergency response planning. The text analysis is able to identify the frequency of both common (e.g. lack of equipment or training, communication failures) and uncommon (e.g. medical or transportation infrastructure destroyed, units misunderstand or refuse orders) failures modes across a range of emergency response events, but is unable to obtain sufficiently detailed information on the consequences of those failures or their root causes to fully implement a FMECA. These findings suggest that future analyses of response failures could draw on AARs as a data source. However, AARs would be more useful as a source of information on emergency response performance if they were standardized to more explicitly include the causes and consequences of failures during emergency response operations.

Social vulnerability refers to the socioeconomic and demographic factors that affect the resilience of communities. Studies have shown that in disaster events the socially vulnerable are more likely to be adversely affected, i.e. they are less likely to recover and more likely to die. Effectively addressing social vulnerability decreases both human suffering and the economic loss related to providing social services and public assistance after a disaster. This paper describes the development of a social vulnerability index (SVI), from 15 census variables at the census tract level, for use in emergency management. It also examines the potential value of the SVI by exploring the impact of Hurricane Katrina on local populations.

The personal computer, and cyber technology in general, opens the doors to the world. Unless an organization can cultivate the flexibility to adapt its processes to the demands of this new technology, it could diminish its capability to execute effective protective and responsive countermeasures against malevolent or unwanted cyber intrusion. In this paper, we define and use the term cyberinfrastructure system to connote a generalized complex, large-scale cyberinfrastructure network that includes hardware, software, organizational policies and procedures, and that is connected to the Internet (e.g., by means of telephone lines, wireless devices, and high-speed technology). Following a malevolent cyber attack, the original cyberinfrastructure security model could have been (unbeknownst to the system’s operators) perturbed and changed, not by its designers, but by adversaries. In other words, the road-map design of the cyberinfrastructure system, which connotes the policies, procedures, methods, connections, and other human and organizational activities that define the functionality of the cyberinfrastructure system, could have been changed following a malevolent cyber attack. Resilience of a cyberinfrastructure system, which is central to its security, is defined as the ability of the system to withstand a major disruption within acceptable degradation parameters and to recover within an acceptable composite cost and time. The central role of systems integration in cyber security is highlighted because it not only connotes the integration of components, but also involves an understanding of the functionality that emerges from that integration. Systems modeling is indispensable in developing awareness when a cyberinfrastructure is intruded and is being violated. Cyberinfrastructure security is essentially multidimensional and of multi-scale compositions—from molecular to macro dimensions—and its wholeness is characterized by multiple and varied paths of interdependence. Thus, this paper advocates a holistic approach as requisite to understanding not only its myriad parts and functionality but also the forced changes imposed upon it both from within and without its domains. Furthermore, models can play a central role in intrusion detection, thus enabling information managers to develop protective and remedial courses of action. They can also be used to answer a wide range of questions, including how to deceive would-be intruders and lead them to believe they are inflicting damage on the real intended system. Through logically organized and systemically executed models, the Phantom System Models (PSM) laboratory, introduced in Section I, is aimed at providing a reasoned experimental modeling framework with which to explore and thus understand the intricate relationships that characterize the nature of multi-scale emergent systems.

This article presents an analysis of the Canadian government's research and policy-making processes in connection with oppositional political terrorism during the time between the McDonald Report (1977) to the Third Kelly Committee (1999). In particular, the article examines this subject by reviewing popular, scholarly, and governmental literature; relying on personal experiences; and, most importantly, focusing on information gathered during a series of interviews with key informants conducted over a 14-year period. The article concludes with a list of factors that impeded government research and policy development connected with this subject and policy area and a handful of suggestions for overcoming these difficulties which may improve the Canadian government’s ability to effectively deal with future acts of terrorism.

Society faces many common challenges that the corporate sector can play a large role to help address. Security against terrorism is one such challenge and is an important pre-condition to sustainable development. Moreover, since terrorism often operates outside of the jurisdiction of state authorities, it is becoming clear that governments cannot address this issue alone. In the United States, for example, there is a large portion of the nation’s infrastructure that owned by the private sector. Using data obtained from 158 survey responses from security professionals in the public and private sector, our structural equation model determined that while prior field surveys indicate that there are many factors that influence the size of security spending (including a sense of social responsibility and attitude toward risk), the most important factor is the cost-benefit analysis that companies themselves undertake. These results may apply to many situations, such as global warming, piracy and pollution control, in which cooperation from the private sector is needed to address threats whose risk is difficult to assess.

A mail survey designed to explore perceptions of the Incident Command System (ICS) and the National Incident Management System (NIMS) was sent to volunteer fire fighters and department chiefs in Spring of 2008. The data demonstrated that both ICS and NIMS were not well perceived among responding volunteer fire chiefs and volunteer fire fighters in North Dakota. Rather than indicating issues with the ICS or NIMS systems themselves, respondents’ comments revealed concerns with the systems to be rooted in their status as volunteers and their residence in rural areas.

Antiterrorism analysis requires that security agencies blend evidence on historical patterns of terrorist behavior with incomplete intelligence on terrorist adversaries to predict possible terrorist operations and devise appropriate countermeasures. We model interactions between reactive, adaptive and intelligent adversaries embedded in minimally sufficient organizational settings to study the optimal analytic mixture, expressed as historical memory reach-back and the number of anticipatory scenarios, that should be used to design antiterrorism policy. We show that history is a valuable source of information when the terrorist organization evolves and acquires new capabilities at such a rapid pace that makes optimal strategies advocated by game-theoretic reasoning unlikely to succeed.

In this paper, we present a decision tree model for evaluation of the next generation radiation portal technology (Advanced Spectroscopic Portals or ASPs) to scan containers entering the United States non-intrusively against nuclear or radiological weapons. Advanced Spectroscopic Portals are compared against the current designs of portal monitors (plastic scintillators or PVTs). We consider five alternative deployment strategies: 1) Exclusive deployment of ASPs replacing all the PVTs currently deployed at U.S. ports of entry, 2) Sequential deployment of ASPs with PVTs installing ASPs in all secondary and some primary inspections areas, 3) Sequential deployment of ASPs with PVTs installing ASPs in only secondary inspections areas, 4) Exclusive deployment of PVTs, 5) Stop deployment of new portal monitors and continue inspections with the current capacity. The baseline solution recommends a hybrid strategy that supports the deployment of new designs of portal monitors for secondary inspections and current designs of portal monitors for primary inspections. However, this solution is found to be very sensitive to the probability of attack attempt, the type of weapon shipped through ports of entry, the probability of successful detonation, detection probabilities and the extra deterrence that each alternative may provide. We also illustrate that the list of most significant parameters depends heavily on the dollar equivalent of overall consequences and the probability of attack attempt. For low probability and low consequence scenarios, false alarm related parameters are found to have more significance. Our extensive exploratory analysis shows that for most parametric combinations, continued deployment of portal monitors is recommended. Exclusive deployment of ASPs is optimal under high risk scenarios. However, we also show that if ASPs fail to improve detection capability, then extra benefits they offer in reducing false alarms may not justify their mass deployment.

The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is a well-equipped and well-trained federal agency capable of providing assistance to relief efforts in a domestic disaster. However, the existence of several different levels of civil response, the variety of the agencies that become involved in the response, the regulations governing the DoD’s involvement, and a lack of understanding of the services the DoD can provide during a disaster lead to confusion which hinders the effectiveness of the response efforts. The concern this paper addresses is the lack of understanding by a number of disaster relief professionals of the exact role of the DoD, as well as the boundaries within which it must operate, during a domestic disaster response. This paper addresses this concern by outlining the recently standardized civil response process for small- to large-scale disasters involving local, state, and federal government organizations, as well as explaining the processes for requesting DoD support and the roles DoD organizations can play. Insights and further research opportunities are also presented.

In the face of manmade and natural disasters, first responders are called upon to respond to emergencies, protect the public, and mitigate further disaster consequences. While this is a professional expectation, extreme crisis events can present an inimitable set of challenges for responders, particularly when they are personally impacted by the disaster in which they are expected to respond. The media reports of “abandonment of duty” among police officers in New Orleans during the Hurricane Katrina disaster highlight the need to better understand factors that both challenge and encourage resilience among first responders. This study examines the coping practices that fostered resilience among the officers of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) who served as first responders to the Katrina disaster. To gain insight into the experiences and activities of officers during the most stressful parts of the crisis, face-to-face interviews were conducted with officers (N = 57) of varying ranks and divisions. The data demonstrates the dynamic nature of coping in disasters, as well as the range of strategies practiced by first responders in crisis situations.

This study described and explained the current implementation behavior of counties in the United States with respect to the National Incident Management System (NIMS). Data were collected in two phases: 1) an internet survey was sent to a national random sample of county emergency managers and 2) a mail survey was sent to emergency managers in the sample that had not completed the internet survey. When data collection ceased, 355 randomly selected county emergency managers had participated in the study providing a nationally generalizable study. It was discovered that NIMS may be limited in its usefulness as the foundation for our nationwide emergency management system as well as its potential for use in large-scale disaster situations because of the wide variation in the manner in which NIMS is currently being implemented in counties across the United States.

The creation of the Department of Homeland Security was a landmark in the history of the U.S. federal government. With the largest reorganization of the federal executive branch in decades, policymakers sought to group agencies with missions related to homeland security under one cabinet level official. It is natural to ask whether this reorganization has succeeded. One measure of that success would be public confidence in the competency of the department. In this paper, we report the results of a national poll which asked a variety of questions related to individuals’ perceptions of the Department of Homeland Security. The results illustrate that the level of confidence in the competency of the Department of Homeland Security is generally high—though there are divisions among people’s evaluations based on party, religiosity, attention to terrorism, and education level.

While there has been a great deal of research that addresses some of the communications obstacles during disasters, there has been few studies on how new information technologies can be integrated to improve communication in disaster response operations. In this research experiment held at Disaster City, Texas, researchers focused on how GIS technologies and cell phones could be utilized by “citizen volunteers” in Community Emergency Response Teams to conduct damage assessments and provide reports and photographs from the field to improve situational awareness in the first hours after a simulated earthquake. This article highlights the power of GIS as a spatial decision support system by emergency managers and the importance of rapid damage assessments after disasters. Finally, this research showed that though there were a number of significant challenges faced by the GIS technician in integrating data collected from the field by citizen volunteers into GIS systems at the EOC, the information was well utilized by the Incident Commander for gaining situational awareness and by the City Engineer to identify buildings with severe damage.

This article describes the Delayed Bang Approach for determining the value of risk management alternatives in critical infrastructure security. The discussion includes (1) the need for sustainable risk management (2) the importance of time valuation in evaluating competing loss prevention and loss reduction alternatives, (3) the convergence of deterministic engineering economics, survivability analysis , and probabilistic analysis, and (4) hypothetical examples of the Delayed-Bang Approach and significance towards more sustainable risk management.

In the face of an increased incidence of complex natural disasters around the world, the international donor community plays a critical role in mobilizing support to fragile and weak states, lacking adequate emergency response capacities, infrastructure, and health service. The United States and the European Union are two of the most important players in these efforts, both in terms of supporting the UN system and by providing resources and personnel at disaster sites. But to date, few studies have assessed what challenges and opportunities the U.S. and the EU face when mobilizing for international disaster relief. This article sets out to fill this gap by studying the response to the January 2010 Haiti earthquake. In so doing, this article draws on three categories of capacities: “public leadership,” “inter-agency coordination,” and “civil-military cooperation,” to identify common challenges and opportunities in response capacities and in order to generate recommendations for strengthening transatlantic disaster responses in the future.

Critical infrastructure protection policy in the United States is broad and complex. The partnership of actors lead by the Department of Homeland Security incorporates “traditional” areas of infrastructure such as water treatment plants and road construction, but also new areas such telecommunications, banking, the food supply, and information systems or “cyberinfrastrucure.” Critical infrastructure protection policy depends upon these actors working together in large, yet loose partnership to identify and mitigate risks to critical infrastructures. In many cases, however, the only thing that these actors have in common is that DHS has designated them to be “critical infrastructure.” How can DHS exhort participation on the parts of different actors? Is this exhortation working?This article examines the efforts of DHS to build a partnership for CIP by specifically looking at mechanisms by which DHS can build commitment to CIP amongst partners (in this case, actors in sectors). A broader contribution of this article, however, is to assess the relative infrastructure focus or coherence of each DHS-designated sector of CIP that is involved in the national plan to protect critical infrastructure. The article relies upon data from federal budgets, sector participant attention to CIP, congressional hearings, and public laws to examine efforts to build new or leverage existing commitment in partners for CIP. I conclude that many of DHS efforts are working, but that success in building commitment is largely confined to sectors with existing ties to earlier conceptions of CIP.

Terrorism is a psychological “mind game” with terrorists and leaders of the targeted society competing to influence and control the terror generated. While terrorists look to maximize their terror, government and public health entities seek to blunt fear and adverse avoidance behaviors that may ensue amongst the public. Drawing upon case studies, the paper employs the risk perception matrix from the field of risk analysis to map and compare the degree of dread risk created by different types of terrorist attacks (CBRNE); and the interplay of terrorism and measures society can undertake to mitigate terror. Case studies include the Second Intifada in Israel, the 1995 Sarin attacks in Tokyo, the London 2005 transport bombings, and 9/11. The paper demonstrates how the risk matrix can provide the public and emergency planners with context to reduce dread, fear and associated adverse avoidance behavior, and how to use information from previous events to guide future planning to augment resilience.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been deploying Advanced Imaging Technologies (AITs) that are full-body scanners to inspect a passenger’s body for concealed weapons, explosives, and other prohibited items. The terrorist threat that AITs are primarily dedicated to is preventing the downing of a commercial airliner by an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) smuggled on board by a passenger. The cost of this technology will reach $1.2 billion per year by 2014. The paper develops a preliminary cost-benefit analysis of AITs for passenger screening at U.S. airports. The analysis considered threat probability, risk reduction, losses, and costs of security measures in the estimation of costs and benefits. Since there is uncertainty and variability of these parameters, three alternate probability (uncertainty) models were used to characterise risk reduction and losses. Economic losses were assumed to vary from $2-$50 billion, and risk reduction from 5-10 percent. Monte-Carlo simulation methods were used to propagate these uncertainties in the calculation of benefits, and the minimum attack probability necessary for full body scanners to be cost-effective were calculated. It was found that, based on mean results, more than one attack every two years would need to originate from U.S. airports for AITs to pass a cost-benefit analysis. However, the attack probability needs to exceed 160-330 percent per year to be 90 percent certain that full body scanners are cost-effective.

The concept of resilience has been used among a diversity of fields with a myriad of definitions. A systems approach to discovering the essence of resilience could aid in understanding its concept and provide opportunities to distinguish its systemic characteristics that can be identified, planned, or analyzed regardless of the field in which it is considered. In order to begin executing such an approach, a comprehensive study of the literature on the topic and circumstances in which resilience has been used or referred to in several fields of studies is necessary. In this paper, the conceptual common denominator of resilience is identified based on the results of a literature survey and according to the way it has been used in different contexts. This basis leads to the objective of this effort, and that is to recognize the systemic characteristics of resilience and demonstrate the defining of a universally accepted definition. Using a soft systems methodology and a supporting systemic diagramming technique entitled Systemigrams, we present the formulation of defining resilience in maritime homeland security. In this effort, many stakeholders contributed their thoughts and concerns on the meaning and operational use of resilience through a repetitive process to formulate a definition of the term. The result of this methodic approach is a general definition of resilience that has been refined in a collaborative environment via the application the Boardman Soft Systems Methodology.

Standardizing and coordinating information is a key challenge for supporting effective emergency management practices. Conventions can be established to ensure collaborators can find common ground quickly during an emergency, but developing such conventions remains difficult amidst continual evolution and diversification in information sources and products. For example, maps are critical to many emergency management situations and cartographers in a wide range of government organizations currently employ a broad range of symbols for their mapping needs. These cartographers must be able to develop geographic information products to support many different mission areas, and map users in an emergency situation must be able to readily understand what they are seeing. Standardizing map symbology can help ensure that geographic information is consumable, but developing standards is a non trivial task. The ANSI 415-2006 INCITS Homeland Security Map Symbol Standard was designed to standardize point symbols for emergency management mapping within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In this paper, we report the results of a series of interviews conducted with DHS cartographers and map users to characterize the adoption and use of the ANSI standard, to identify the use of other map symbol standards, to identify critical incidents regarding map symbology, to explore technical and organizational challenges for standard development, and to elicit ideas for new processes for developing map symbol standards that support homeland security.

Throughout history, disasters have had a defining impact on individuals, governments, and society as a whole. The terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 and several catastrophic hurricanes in the gulf region have brought disaster response and emergency management to a new level of visibility and importance in the United States. The increased media coverage of international disasters, such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 and the Earthquake in Haiti in 2010, have resulted in international disaster response and recovery efforts becoming a larger part of foreign policy for developed countries. The changing scene of disaster response and recovery has also resulted in a rapid increase in the number of private organizations emerging to assist in the wake of such catastrophes. There are significant cross-cultural dynamics and interoperability issues that become apparent when new actors (governments, businesses, organizations, etc.) enter an unfamiliar disaster environment which could reduce the operational efficacy of both local and foreign actors. In this project we propose an approach to support and guide decision makers in emergency environments on how to select and develop relationships to improve resource utilization and project outcomes in the wake of a disaster. Using game theory, we provide an initial approach for the development of a decision support framework for emergency managers entering a disaster environment.

The government and people of the United States were profoundly affected by the terrorist events of September 11, 2001. Despite the rapid succession of surveys and polls focused on people’s reactions to 9/11 that were conducted shortly after the event, much remains unknown about the details of how it affected people’s behavior and readiness for future events on a national scale. This study is based on a survey of a nationally representative sample of 3,300 households. It describes specific actions that people took to prepare for terrorism or to reduce exposure to terrorism risk during the years following 9/11, either exclusively because of the terrorism risk or for other reasons. The results show that while many individuals became more vigilant and learned more about terrorism, the threat of terrorism alone did not motivate them to take basic preparedness actions. It did, however, motivate a substantial number of people to avoid places and other things that might expose them to terrorism risk. These results elucidate the impact that 9/11 had on individual behavior and national preparedness, helping to inform future efforts to strengthen the nation’s resilience to terrorism and other extreme events.

Web forums are frequently used as platforms for the exchange of information and opinions as well as propaganda dissemination. But online content can be misused when the information being distributed, such as radical opinions, is unsolicited or inappropriate. This study introduces a technique that combines machine learning and semantic-oriented approaches to identify radical opinions in hate group Web forums. Four types of text features (syntactic, stylistic, content-specific, and lexicon features) are extracted as text classification predictors, and three classification techniques (SVM, Naïve Bayes, and Adaboost) are implemented. Postings from two hate group Web forums are collected and the preliminary results are encouraging. In addition, cross-validation indicates the proposed technique is stable and extendible to timeframes beyond that of the training data. The proposed technique can also be an effective tool for other sentiment classification problems.

This article takes a closer look at the United States’ domestic preparedness program. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the domestic preparedness program has served as the United States’ disaster response and management option in the case of a biological or chemical weapons attack. In its early years, the program focused solely on chemical weapons, but eventually expanded to cover the threat of biological weapons as well. The program, however, is fragmented, leaving authority in the hands of over a dozen different agencies. This leaves the authorities, capabilities, and resources needed to effectively implement the program divided across multiple bureaucracies. In addition, the program is essentially made up of a series of legislative initiatives, causing it to be desperately uncoordinated. Given this organizational fragmentation, we ask: does the domestic preparedness program really prepare the United States for a biological weapons attack?

In this paper, we address the problem of situational awareness in the context of emergency management. Due to the widespread application of information technology, emergency managers face a new challenge in information overload, rather than the lack of information as in the past. These new tools deliver large volumes of data to the decision makers, often in real time. However, during the crisis, the task of identifying the key relevant information poses a real challenge and failure to do so can have disastrous consequences. To address this problem, we propose a model for the fusion of data from diverse sources, both real-time and static, to derive numerical measures that represent the status of a jurisdiction. In our approach, we combine the data available from various sources with human expertise to build customized models based on threats characteristic for particular jurisdictions. We developed a prototype based on data collected for several municipalities and implemented it as a computer model.

Recent events involving active shooters on campus underscore the importance of promptly notifying the campus community so students, faculty, and staff can take protective action as the incident develops. This study (a) developed warning messages informing the campus of an active shooter that can be delivered to cellular telephones and e-mail accounts, and (b) assessed their effectiveness. Participants were 264 (76 men, 188 women) undergraduate students at Western Washington University who indicated their understanding of and anticipated responses to text and e-mail messages. Participants indicated that they understood the instructions and would take the actions indicated in the messages. The results indicate text and e-mail messages are effective ways to notify and provide coherent instructions to the community during a life threatening emergency. This approach may be modified to create templates for other emergencies and disasters (e.g., earthquakes, tornadoes).

The initial development of the Incident Command System (ICS) and the Multiagency Coordination System (MACS) was conducted through an extensive research, development, and application program initiated by the United States Forest Service in the 1970s and 1980s. Known as FIRESCOPE (Firefighting Resources of California Organized for Potential Emergencies), the complex development process produced these two major management systems that are now central to the Department of Homeland Security’s National Incident Management System (NIMS). Despite the prominence of NIMS, very little information is widely available regarding the original research and development of ICS and MACS. This paper explores the extensive product development and consensus process used to create ICS and MACS, plus the implementation process that propagated these landmark systems that continue to expand in prominence for incident management and coordination during emergencies and disasters. Through analysis of historical documents and interviews with professionals centrally involved in FIRESCOPE, this paper chronicles the evolution of ICS and MACS, including a summary of their varied courses following the end of the original 10-year FIRESCOPE Program initiative.

This study briefly reviews literature, news and reports dealing with emergency notification and then discusses lessons learned by way of observation during development and testing of an emergency notification system (ENS) for Maricopa County, Arizona prior to and during a county-wide, multi-agency functional exercise. This exercise, dealing with flood response, took place under the auspices of the Maricopa County Department of Emergency Management (MCDEM). MCDEM assumed responsibility during this exercise to test the functionality of a newly purchased commercial automated ENS, Communicator! NXT, made by Dialogic Communications Corporation, now PlantCML, and test its associated implementation. The exercise was designed to involve many different local agencies and as many as several dozen contacts per notification message tested. The study focuses on what can be learned outside of existing published literature about the development and testing of the ENS for activating emergency management personnel and achieving a common operating picture for all stakeholders. The study discusses a number of problems identified during the pre-exercise preparation period and during the exercise, as well as the resolution of these problems.

This study examines feedback from automated reports and a participant survey concerning implementation of an emergency notification system (ENS) in a multi-agency functional flood exercise hosted by Maricopa County Department of Emergency Management. Representatives from nearly two dozen agencies were present. Emergency notifications through the ENS were reported after the exercise to have generally been useful in terms of keeping agencies appropriately informed in a timely manner. Most exercise users indicated that they were pleased overall with the results of using the ENS. One aspect of the experience that they noted having appreciated was the opportunity to replay messages if they wished to do so. However, technical problems with use of the ENS did exist. For example, text-to-speech (TTS) rendering in some instances produced messages with poor intelligibility, confirming the need for care in choosing well-functioning text-to-speech software and in crafting TTS messages appropriately for TTS rendering. Some messages going to voice mail during the exercise were clipped, such that recipients could not hear the entire message, a flaw. While nearly all exercise players received emergency notifications from the ENS via one or more communication devices, less than half of the total messages were listened to during the timeframe of the exercise. This confirmed the wisdom of keeping messages sent through different communication systems and channels consistent, because not all contacts listen to all messages on all receiving devices. Exercise players indicated a need for (i) notification messages to be crafted to be short, concise and easy to understand, (ii) the messages to have a date and time associated with them, and (iii) the messages to contain geographic locations, information on emergency impacts, and other intelligence needed to allow users to make appropriate responses.

Skilled support personnel responding to national disasters are at great risk to develop physical and mental health problems that can cause short- and long-term disability and prove to be fatal. Health issues endured by these workers can be attributed to a lack of pre-deployment training. Costs accrued for health care from hazardous exposures in disaster zones continues to increase as symptoms manifest years after the event. Illnesses could be prevented if workers received comprehensive training prior to deployment at the site. Pre-deployment occupational safety and health training is critical to protect the well-being of disaster site workers.

Author Nicholas V. Cagliuso Sr. reviews The Feeling of Risk: New Perspectives on Risk Perception.

Author Alan H. Hall reviews Changing Climate, Changing Economy.

Author David M. Claborn reviews Security and Emergency Planning for Water and Wastewater Utilities by Stanley States

David Carmichael attempts to answer the question “What do you do when there are Picasso’s floating in the basement?” with a book intended for libraries, archives, and museums. He provides a framework for cultural institutions to use the Incident Command System before and during a disaster, to protect and salvage their collections. His friendly and conversational style doesn’t intimidate or pressure and explains a complex system in understandable language. This book could be a guide to the ICS for any non-emergency response institution or agency.

The United States has invested significant resources toward creating a surveillance capability that can detect emerging diseases or acts of bioterrorism. While this is a timely pursuit — the WHO states new diseases are being detected at an unprecedented rate — the effort remains disjointed and oriented toward “high-tech” solutions, often at the expense of potentially readily apparent solutions. This article examines extant surveillance efforts and proposes that a more mundane approach to biosurveillance may actually be more productive.

The creation of a continuity of operations plan (COOP) by organizations is widely recognized as a key element of disaster preparedness and disaster response strategies and has been an accepted part of the emergency preparedness landscape since 1955. In 2009, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) issued Continuity Guidance Circular 1 (CGC 1) as a means of reducing the content variability of COOPs developed by non-Federal entities. FEMA’s CGC 1 does not offer an effective means of translating the content guidance into practical information gathering and presentation. The South Central Center for Public Health Preparedness (SCCPHP) assisted the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) to develop a template for COOP development conforming to CGC 1 to meet the needs of Alabama state agencies. The State of Alabama COOP Template has two parts: 1) a set of work sheets to be completed by the COOP Team and 2) the document shell into which completed work sheets will be inserted. The template consists of 22 work sheets designed for preparing for all-hazards, some of the work sheets have special considerations for responses to emergencies with significant worker absenteeism, such as influenza pandemics, and those that affect access to facilities and transportation resources, such as hurricanes, floods, and acts of terrorism.

Shelter-in-place (SIP) and evacuation are the two most common types of population protection used during emergency incidents involving time limited health crises such as releases of toxic chemicals, biological agents or radioactive materials. This article describes a training program for seven target groups in a large Midwestern county that can be used to develop SIP and evacuation competencies to enhance the effectiveness of those protective actions.

FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute higher education initiative states that a broad range of college students and professionals need courses that introduce them to disasters and what to do about them. Hundreds of universities have since developed emergency management courses or degree programs at their schools; however, none of these institutions are bible colleges. Because of the critical role of faith-based organizations during response and recovery phases of disasters, a closer examination of ways to make training more accessible to their leaders is warranted. Although a plethora of training opportunities and resources are available to faith-based leaders, very few training initiatives incorporate theological principles for crisis management or target institutions that educate a large portion of leaders of faith communities such as bible colleges and seminaries. The purpose of this article is to introduce emergency management educators and practitioners to a curriculum that addresses barriers to engaging faith-based leaders and volunteers in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery activities. The article also describes the course development process and content of this culturally appropriate curriculum intended for use in higher education bible colleges and seminaries. Lastly, authors discuss how this course helps to ensure that the legacy of faith-based leader’s involvement in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery will not only continue but will be done more effectively. By informing faculty and administrators of emergency management programs about this initiative, insight on where existing and future programs should focus their efforts is offered.

Homeland security risks remain eminent. As the risks associated with terrorist attacks and other disasters endure, questions addressing the problems associated with homeland security risks will continue to attract attention in the foreseeable future. Among the manageable problems concerning disaster preparedness and mitigation include the protection of critical infrastructures. Notwithstanding the growth in research and development of techniques and strategies for effectively managing critical infrastructure problems, issues have been left unaccounted for including the provision of open intelligence to adversaries. This letter provides a critical view of research on infrastructure vulnerability and analysis. Specifically, it warns of the potentially counter-productive nature of publishing interdiction models—methods for identifying the most vital assets within infrastructure systems—in which adversaries have the potential to adopt and apply interdiction models to maximize their own objectives of destruction. This letter calls for an incorporation of overlooked costs into the analysis of the effectiveness of techniques designed to identify and allocate fortification resources to assets within critical infrastructure systems.

The United States stands at constant risk of attack from naturally occurring, emerging or intentionally released biological or chemical agents. Our fragmented and underprepared health care system must rely on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) when a public health emergency occurs and surging patient populations overwhelm resources and reserves. While the SNS offers, a robust capability and logistical infrastructure, there are still concerns over the allocation of these resources when needed. As the health care system adjusts to economic and political influences, health care organizations are reexamining their investment in the market, and as facilities close and consolidate, health care resources become increasingly scarce. When needed, what ethical questions does the SNS force us to make? Can we make these decisions along a path of social justice and still turn away an emerging pandemic?

John Odermatt has been the Commissioner of the New York City Office of Emergency Management and Executive Officer of the NYC Police Department’s Intelligence Division. He is currently the Global Director of Business Continuity for Citigroup, Inc. Since 9/11, large numbers of managers have been added to the field of emergency management; however there is still a dearth of leaders. Leadership is not a course to be taken. It is a quality of character. John Odermatt embodies both management and leadership. It was an honor and a pleasure to talk with Mr. Odermatt in his office in New York in mid-June 2011. This article is a summary of the salient points from that conversation.