Date of Award

Spring 2012

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering

Committee Director

Adrian Gheorghe

Committee Member

Ariel Pinto

Committee Member

Charles Keating

Committee Member

Barry Ezell

Abstract

Risk for homeland security and homeland defense is often considered to be a function of threat, vulnerability, and consequence. But what is that function? And are we defining and measuring these terms consistently? Threat, vulnerability, and consequence assessments are conducted, often separately, and data from one assessment could be drastically different from that of another due to inconsistent definitions of terms and measurements, differing data collection methods, or varying data sources. It has also long been a challenge to integrate these three disparate assessments to establish an overall picture of risk to a given asset. Further, many agencies conduct these assessments and there is little to no sharing of data, methodologies, or results vertically (between federal, state, and local decision-makers) or horizontally (across the many different sectors), which results in duplication of efforts and conflicting risk assessment results.

Obviously, risk is a function of our perceptions and those perceptions can influence our understanding of threat, vulnerability, and consequence. Some assessments rely on perceptions (elicited from subject matter experts) in order to qualify or quantify threat, vulnerability, and consequence. Others exclude perception altogether, relying on objective data, if available. Rather than fault the subjectivity of our perceptions, or muddle objective assessments with personal opinions, it makes sense to embrace our perceptions, but segregate them as a unique component of risk.

A risk quadruplet is proposed to systematically collect and integrate assessments of threat, vulnerability, consequence, and perception, such that each dimension can be explored uniquely, and such that all four components can be aggregated into an overall risk assessment in a consistent, transparent, traceable, and reproducible manner. The risk quadruplet draws from the fields of homeland security, homeland defense, systems engineering, and even psychology to develop a model of risk that integrates all four assessments using multicriteria decision analysis. The model has undergone preliminary validation and has proven to be a viable solution for ranking assets based on the four proposed components of risk.

DOI

10.25777/t546-1573

ISBN

9781267395924

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