Department of Homeland Security Bioterrorism Risk Assessment A Call for Change (2008) / Chapter Skim
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7 Improving the Department of Homeland Security's Biological Threat Risk Assessment and Adding Risk Management
7 Improving the Department of Homeland Security's Biological Threat Risk Assessment and Adding Risk Management
Pages 51-60
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From page 51... ...
-- Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 THE USE OF PROBABILISTIC EVENT TREES ALONE than others, the conditional probability distributions are IS INSUFFICIENT TO MODEL TERRORISM THREATS seldom assessed in the chronological order of the event tree. In the BTRA of 2006, however, probability assessment for Terrorism, especially relatively high-technology bioterror- each event in the tree was done by requiring a chronological ism, involves intelligent adversaries whose decisions focus ordering of events, using assumptions about dependence on on achieving their objectives by responding to the observed some of the previous events.
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From page 52... ...
• Convert each node representing a terrorist decision into an expected-damage maximizing decision node, Red Teaming Can Be Used to Understand • Assess probabilities of outcomes of random events, Intelligent Adversaries rather than probability distributions of outcomes, DHS has experience in exercises. But, for instance, although Top Officials 3 (TOPOFF 3)
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From page 53... ...
Using a compatible set of defense options, to minimize the these alternate choices, the Bioterrorist Decision Model maximum expected damage from any attack; these can be relatively quickly implemented for bioterrorism risk investments are of such magnitude that they are necesassessment and risk management because it uses existing sarily visible to the attacker; techniques (Parnell, 2008) , it is a direct modification of the 2. The attacker, after observing these defense invest2006 BTRA event tree, and it uses commercially available, ments, chooses attack alternative(s)
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From page 54... ...
To assess the probabilities of terrorist Does not. Would require new Terrorist decision nodes Probabilities of Probabilities of decisions, DHS should use elicitation techniques to replace replace event nodes, and terrorist actions terrorist actions are techniques and decision-oriented sole reliance on event decision tree is solved to are outputs of outputs of game models that explicitly recognize trees.
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From page 55... ...
Would require new Explicitly designed Explicitly Explicitly should explore alternative models of techniques to replace to consider intelligent designed to designed to terrorists as intelligent adversaries who sole reliance on event adversaries. consider intelligent consider intelligent seek to maximize the achievement of trees.
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From page 56... ...
(Appendix F does not address the resource allocation ter defenses, terrorists are forced to optimally spread their issue treated in Appendix E, but the optimization developed efforts among more and more attack alternatives, and the in Appendix E could be transferred to Appendix F.) United States responds with increasingly diverse mitigation More generally, game theory is useful for analyzing the efforts.
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From page 57... ...
In this way, the number of audits Risk Management Strategies needed would be reduced because units that had received The three models considered here all treat adversaries as seals of approval from private third-party inspectors would intelligent adversaries that seek to maximize their objectives. already be known.
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From page 58... ...
However, throughout this report the committee has noted These models can then be used to assess the risk reduction many weaknesses in risk analysis, modeling of intelligent (reduction in probability and/or reduction in consequences) agents, consequence assessment, and presentation of as- for the resources required for risk management options.
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From page 59... ...
of Terrorist Attacks, H.W. Richardson, P
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