Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergencies
Fall 2024
News and Updates
On September 11 this year, I spent the afternoon at the 9/11 memorial in lower Manhattan. The memorial is a remarkable place, particularly on the day we honor the thousands of lives lost during the terrorist attack. Two waterfalls mark the bases of the twin towers. The cascading waters are a constant reminder of the many people who died or were injured on that day. On the anniversary, the memorial was adorned with flowers, such as the one in the photo above. It was surrounded with people returning to remember those lost 23 years ago, or there to acknowledge how 9/11 changed America and the world.
This fall, the Department of Homeland Security honored the many universities that came together to form the DHS network of Centers of Excellence (COE), each focused on an aspect of making the nation safer against threats, both natural and human caused. The DHS Office of University Program’s website provides a history and a video, recognizing that CREATE was the very first COE, beginning the network 20 years ago.
CREATE continues to thrive through research with our network of collaborators, stakeholders and sponsors. But threats to the homeland remain. We welcome your input and participation in making our nation safer and more resilient.
Randy Hall
Director, CREATE
Books
Managing Innovation Inside University, authored by Randolph Hall, was published by Springer. The book offers guidance on capturing the creative forces of the faculty, staff and students at universities, examining how university research, learning and service can be integrated to address the needs of society as it is both enabled and changed by technology. The book also assesses the opportunities for universities to be more successful and impactful through innovation. Managing Innovation provides insights into how universities can prosper and lead in a world that is constantly changed by the innovations that universities and industry jointly create. It serves as a guide for higher education policymakers, funders, donors, board members, stakeholders and leaders (chairs, deans, provosts, presidents), as well as strategic partners, through its systematic vision for university innovation.
Behavioral Decision Analysis, co-edited by Gilberto Montibeller, with Florian Federspiel, was also published by Springer. The book addresses the state of the art in behavioral decision analysis. Traditional research on decision analysis has focused on the design and application of logically consistent tools to support decision makers. Two commonly held assumptions are that the decision maker’s cognitive belief system is fully accessible and that this system can be understood and formalized by trained analysts. This book unites the research community under the common theme of Behavioral Decision Analysis. The taxonomy used in this book categorizes research based on task focus (prediction or decision) and behavioral level (individual or group).
Grants and Contracts
Detlof von Winterfeldt (PI), Isaac Maya, and Richard John (co-PI) have received a $1.25M award from the Department of Homeland Security to extend CREATE’S work on Science and Technology Analysis and Management of Innovation Activity (STAMINA), from September 2024 to September 2025. Randolph Hall will also contribute research to the project, and is PI for the Broad Ordering Agreement under which the contract was awarded. Jeff Countryman will provide staff support. More information on CREATE’s research transition program can be found on our Transition Projects webpage.
Randolph Hall (PI) and Isaac Maya have received an $86K award from the DHS funded ADAC-ARCTIC Center at the University of Alaska at Anchorage to support technology transition. Dr. Maya serves as Strategic Director of Transition within the new center.
CREATE collaborator, Leidos Corporation, was among nine companies selected for a 10-year, $4 billion indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicle for research-and-development work focused on technologies to counter weapons of mass destruction. Randolph Hall, along with Adam Rose, supported the Leidos proposal.
CREATE affiliated researchers received an NSF grant for Advanced Data and Methods to Improve Hazard Resilience for Underrepresented Groups: Minority- and Women-Owned Small and Mid-Sized Businesses. The grant engages three generations of CREATE-affiliated researchers, including Co-PI Adam Rose. The project is led by PI Alfredo Roa-Henriquez (Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management, North Dakota State University). Noah Dormady (CREATE External Research Fellow and Associate Professor in Ohio State’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs; PhD Price School graduate mentored by Rose), is also a co-PI. Dr. Roa-Henriquez was mentored by Dr. Dormady in his PhD studies at Ohio State.
Jun Zhuang has a new project “Real-time Reconfigurable Intelligence-based Patrol Strategies (RTRIPS)” funded by the DHS Center of Excellence: Center for Accelerating Operational Efficiency (CAOE). Jun Zhuang also has a new project “Adapting, Assessing, and Mitigating Risks to a Complex Future in the Arctic: A Multi-Stakeholder Framework” funded by the DHS sponsored ADAC-ARCTIC Center of Excellence.
Scott Farrow received a 2nd year of funding from CAOE in the amount of $104,000 for “Novel Benefit and Value Methods for Homeland Security Distributional and Border Outcomes.”
Adam Rose is Co-Principal Investigator for an award from the USC President’s Sustainability Initiative–Alleviating Health Inequities from Air Pollution in the Gateway Cities Region: An Evidence-Based, Community-Engaged and Interdisciplinary Approach (with Bryan Tysinger, Santina Contreras and others), 2024-25.
Publications
Economic Analysis
Finn Prager, C. Huyck, M. Mendoza, Adam Rose, M. Amyx, G. Yetman and K. Tiampo. 2024. “Applying Earth Observation Technologies to Economic Consequence Modeling: A Case Study of COVID-19 in Los Angeles County, California,” International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 15(1): 18-31.
Solow, A. and S. Farrow (2024). “Li and Pizer in the short-run: A comment on discounting" Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, V. 127.
Sue Wing, I., Adam Rose, Dan Wei, and A. Wein. 2024. “The Long Shadow of a Major Disaster: Modeled Dynamic Impacts of the Hypothetical HayWired Earthquake on California’s Economy,” International Regional Science Review 47(5-6): 655-96.
Decision and Risk Analysis
Bruine de Bruin, W., Kruke, L., Sinatra, G.M., & Schwarz, N. (2024). Should we change the term we use for climate change? Evidence from a national terminology experiment. Climatic Change, 177 .
Byrd, K., Adam Rose, K. Kapadia, and Richard John. 2024. “Securing Public Spaces: Public Willingness to Sacrifice Convenience and Privacy for Security in Three U.S. Public Venues,” Journal of Risk Research.
Chen, Z., Güney, S., & Richard John. (2024). Sunk cost effects for thee but not for me: Decisions and predictions involving others. Acta Psychologica. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104557
Federspiel, F.M., Montibeller, G. and Seifert, M., 2024. Behavioral Decision Analysis: Past, Present and Future. In Behavioral Decision Analysis (pp. 1-14). International Series in Operations Research & Management Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Kapadia, K., Yongsatianchot, N., Byrd, K., Marsella, S., and Richard John (2024). The impact of social influence and threat uncertainty on behavior in a school shooting simulation. 17th International Conference on Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management & Asian Symposium on Risk Assessment and Management (PSAM17&ASRAM2024) 7-11 October, 2024, Sendai International Center, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan.
Kapadia, K., Yongsatianchot, N., Marsella, S., and Richard John (2024). Integrating actual human behavior into an agent-based school shooting simulation. Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), Orlando, Dec. 15-18.
Migliaro, T. & Richard John (2024). A scenario experiment of public perceptions of probable cause and reasonable suspicion searches varying strength of evidence. 18th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS), Emory University School of Law, Atlanta, Ga., Nov. 8-9, 2024.
Miller, J.D., Staddon, C., Salzberg, A., Lucks, J.B., Bruine de Bruin, W., & Young, S. (2024). Self-reported anticipated harm from drinking water across 141 countries. Nature Communications, 15, 7320.
Mingdong Lyu, Chang Chang, Kuofu Liu and Randolph Hall (2024). Dynamic Vaccine Allocation for Control of Human-Transmissible Disease. Vaccines. V. 12.
Mingdong Lyu, Kuofu Liu and Randolph Hall (2024). Spatial Interaction Analysis of Infectious Disease Import and Export between Regions. V. 21. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
Montibeller, G. and von Winterfeldt, D., 2024. Behavioral Decision Research: Descriptive and Prescriptive Perspectives. In Behavioral Decision Analysis (pp. 15-40). International Series in Operations Research & Management Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Qiao, A. & Richard John (2024). Estimating the perceived threat threshold for acting in self-defense. Law, Probability, and Risk. doi: 10.1093/lpr/mgae012
Scurich, N. & Richard John. (2024). Implicit Blackstone Ratios in decisions made by firearm and toolmark examiners. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 13(1), 153-155. doi: 10.1037/mac0000158
Scurich, N. & Richard John. (2024). On coping in a non-binary world: Rejoinder to Biedermann and Kotsoglou. Statistics and Public Policy, 11(1). doi: 10.1080/2330443X.2024.2302189
Secor, M., D. Koolman, II, R. Greer, J. Reinhardt, S. Chatterjee, K. Hill, and E. Watkins. “Implementation of a holistic risk framework for critical infrastructure.” In Proceedings of 17th International Conference on Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management (PSAM 17) and Asian Symposium on Risk Assessment and Management (ASRAM), October 2024, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan.
Thekdi, S., U. Tatar, J. Santos, and S. Chatterjee. (2024) On the compatibility of established methods with emerging artificial intelligence and machine learning methods for disaster risk analysis. Risk Analysis, 1-15.
Watson, J.R., D. Eisenberg, R. Anderson, U. Bhatia, S. Chatterjee, M.C. Gonzalez, A. Mishra, A.K. Pal, N. Yadav, and A.R. Ganguly. (2024) Designing, operating, and rebuilding infrastructures and lifelines for resilience to extreme flooding. Frontiers in Water: Editorial in Water and Built Environment Specialty Section, 6, 1-4.
Vistors
Dr. Roger Jin and a group of California State University at Dominguez Hill (CSUDH) faculty and students (including CREATE External Research Fellow, Dr. Fynnwin Prager) joined Randolph Hall, Adam Rose and a team of USC students in a retreat sponsored by CREATE. Dr. Jin leads a DHS supported Minority Serving Institution center focused on system engineering and related topics, in partnership with CREATE.
Dr. David Mussington, Executive Assistant Director for Infrastructure Security at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with his team, visited CREATE in September, meeting with Adam Rose and Richard John, along with Randolph Hall.
Dr. Zvi Galil from Georgia Tech visited in October to present a seminar on online education. Dr. Galil is former President of Tel Aviv University, former Dean of Engineering at Columbia and former Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech.
Dr. Hongsheng Zhong presented “Optimizing Global Logistics: Advanced Operations Research and Analytics at UPS” at USC. He is Lead Operations Research Scientist at UPS, and a former PhD student of CREATE Director Randolph Hall at USC, who worked on package routing systems in his thesis on “Territory Planning and Vehicle Dispatching with Driver Learning." CREATE has an ongoing initiative on supply chain resilience.
Milestones and Honors
Issac Maya has been appointed Strategic Director of Transition to assist in the transition of ADAC-ARCTIC R&D results, tools, technologies and knowledge products to DHS’s operational component end-users. Dr. Maya will also work closely with ADAC-ARCTIC researchers and leadership to ensure best practices are employed in all processes, projects, and activities.
Gilberto Montibeller has been re-appointed as Area Editor (Multi-attribute value/utility theory) of the Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis.
Jun Zhuang was appointed as the Associate Dean for Research in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University at Buffalo, starting July 1st, 2024.
Adam Rose was appointed Research Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (by courtesy). He also gave a briefing, “Modeling the Impact of Complex, Multi-Vector Disruptions to the Marine Transportation System” (with F. Roberts and A. Tucci), to the US Coast Guard Office of Waterways & Ocean Policy, October 25.
Alumni
Mingdong Lyu (PhD, 2023, Viterbi School) is now a Network Analyst Product Engineer at ESRI in Redlands, California. ESRI builds ArcGIS, a geographic information system platform used in a wide range of industries, government agencies and non-profit organizations. He formerly worked at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.
Noah Miller, (PhD, 2024, Price School) has taken a position as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Carnegie Mellon University Heinz College of Public Policy, Management, and Information Systems.
Bess Djavadi, (MS, 2024, Price School and Information Sciences), has begun the PhD Program in the RAND Pardee School.
Media and Presentations
Wandi Bruine de Bruin research on climate change was featured in articles in Psychology Today and US News and World Report. In The Conversation, She and co-author Gale Sinatra published “If you want Americans to pay attention to climate change, just call it climate change.” Bruin also delivered the keynote presentation at the Society for Risk Analysis Europe in Athens and at the International Congress on Thinking in Milan, both on “Communicating the Climate Crisis"
Ohio State University News featured the work of Noah Dormady on business resilience in Japan.
Adam Rose was interviewed on KCBS Radio San Francisco about the difficulty in estimating economic losses from hurricanes, September 20, 2024. He was also quoted in a story in GRIST about how Hurricane Francine’s Impact has led to significant health costs in affected communities, September 19, 2024.
Adam Rose presented the paper “Economy-wide Consequences of Widespread, Long Duration Electric Power Interruptions” (co-authored with Ian Sue Wing, Peter Larsen, Dan Wei, and others) at the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) Annual Meeting, June 5, 2024. This paper was also presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE), July 4, 2024. Rose also presented the paper “Economic Impacts of Complex Disasters Affecting the Twin Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach” (co-authored with Noah Miller, Zhenhua Chen, Fred Roberts, Andrew Tucci and Latha Vijayagopal) virtually at the Annual Meeting of the International Society for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRiM), August 29, 2024.