Marrying prevention and resiliency : balancing approaches to an uncertain terrorist threat / Brian A. Jackson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jackson, Brian A.

Contributor:

Rand Homeland Security (Program)

Series:

Occasional paper (Rand Corporation)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Terrorism--United States--Prevention.

Terrorism.

Transportation--Security measures--United States.

Transportation.

Uncertainty.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 18 pages)

Other Title:

Marrying prevention & resiliency

Place of Publication:

Santa Monica, CA : RAND Corporation, 2008.

Summary:

The uncertain nature of the terrorist threat is a fundamental challenge in the design of counterterrorism policy. To deal with this uncertainty, the author recommends a capabilities-based, portfolio approach to terrorism prevention planning, drawing examples from aviation security policy. While traditional terrorism-prevention measures seek to prevent all damage by stopping them completely, mitigation and resiliency measures buy a lower, but more certain, payoff: preventing only some of the damage from attacks, but doing so predictably across the many different ways in which threats might become manifest. In a prevention and mitigation portfolio, some measures would reach for the highest payoff of completely preventing attacks, while others would provide a more-stable protective return by limiting the damages any terrorist operation or other incident. Protective portfolios should be assessed to determine which will perform well across a range of possible futures and be judged less sensitive to threat uncertainty -- and therefore more attractive given an uncertain future.

Contents:

The issue Background : the challenges to "traditional prevention" Dealing with threat uncertainty How might the impact of this approach be evaluated?