Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergencies

This was a semester when emergencies and disasters came close to home – literally – as seen in these photos taken on January 7 in my neighborhood. While my family was fortunate to evacuate and return without harm, dozens of my friends were not so lucky, losing their homes in Altadena.

When I returned as CREATE Director in 2021, our name changed to the “Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergencies," dropping “terrorism" from our title so that we could emphasize the broad scope of the homeland security mission. In the years after 9/11, the U.S. has experienced climate related disasters at increasing frequency and magnitude (as in January’s L.A. fires), as well as a pandemic that took the lives of more than a million Americans. Few Americans are untouched by such disasters. Nevertheless, the 2015 San Bernardino attack that took the life of former CREATE employee Hal Bowman and 13 others tells us that we must remain ever vigilant against terrorism, as we simultaneously prepare for the escalating threats of extreme weather, contagious disease and fire. Protection against catastrophes of all types is our mission.

We must also be cognizant that in the years since 9/11, terrorism has been more prevalent outside America than inside, and that attacks occurring far away – Africa and the Middle East in particular – affect us here. I am reminded of the 2016 attack on American University in Kabul, notably an assault on knowledge and on civil rights of women. The attackers killed 13 people, including my daughter’s colleague working with Stanford University to establish rule of law in Afghanistan (a program funded by the State Department that promotes democracy and justice abroad).

CREATE achieved much over the last six months. We topped $90 million in cumulative funding since inception. We actively published research on business resilience, school security, terrorist countermeasures, adversarial beliefs, climate change and security. CREATE Senior Fellow Matthew Kahn published a book on Natural Disaster Economics. We helped two new DHS Centers – at the University of Alaska and California State University Dominguez Hills – get off the ground. We continued to support DHS on multiple projects for the transition of research into homeland security practice.

Despite our achievements, the last few months have been incredibly challenging for CREATE along with all of the DHS University Centers. Five USC contracts were cancelled this spring when DHS terminated all of its active university centers. Though two of the centers were reinstated, the major loss of university-DHS collaboration portends damage for our nation’s preparedness against future homeland threats.

When Congress enacted the bi-partisan Homeland Security Act of 2002, they created the DHS University Center of Excellence Program. Congress saw the value of universities as a source of creativity, imagination, skill and talent to address America’s catastrophic threats. When CREATE was selected as the very first center, DHS recognized the importance of our systematic approach to analyzing risk and economics as an integrated whole. I am proud that we and other universities have contributed to national security, as we have highlighted in the CREATE Factsheet.

As we develop our strategy for the future, CREATE will be in transition. This summer, our office will move from downtown Los Angeles back to the USC campus. Though our space will be compressed, the new location will make it easier to engage faculty, students and staff across the USC campus. I will also step down as CREATE Director, a decision that I conveyed a year ago so that I could embark on a sabbatical focused on university innovation (the focus of my book from last year). I expect the center will be in good hands with a new director selected by the deans of the Viterbi School of Engineering and the Price School of Public Policy.

Randy Hall
Director, CREATE

The fires in Los Angeles ignited in January 2025. CREATE Senior Fellow and USC Professor of Economics Matthew Kahn uses this shock to explore the microeconomics of natural disasters along with the causes and consequences of extreme weather events. including hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, extreme heat, and pollution spikes. He addresses tough questions: Why do these shocks cause damage? Why weren’t people, firms, and governments prepared for such shocks? What does it mean “to be ready"?

Economic Analysis

Rose, A. and Djavadi, B.. (2025). “Behavioral Aspects of Population Mobility Following a Chemical, Biological, Radiologic or Nuclear Event," International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13753-024-00609-y

Rose, A., Nagamatsu, S. and Djavadi, B. (2025). “Toward a Theory of Population Return from Disasters: A Synthesis and Extension of Research Advances," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, https://doi.org/10.1007/s41885-025-00175-7

Wing, S.I., Larsen, P., Carvallo, J.P., Sanstad, A., Wei, D., Rose, A. and Baik, S. (2025). “Economy-wide Consequences of Widespread, Long Duration Electric Power Interruptions: Evidence from the Greater Chicago Area," Nature Communications 16: 3335, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58537-4

Decision and Risk Analysis

Amjadi, E. & John, R. S. (2025). “Count on me: Moral language in social media and policy discourse during the Ukraine-Russia conflict." Data and Policy, doi: 10.1017/dap.2024.98

Bruine de Bruin, W., Sleboda, P., & Gatiso, T.G. (2024). “Global public concerns about climate change: The role of education, direct experience, and indirect experience." Journal of Risk Research, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13669877.2024.2431905

Byrd, K., Kapadia, K., & John, R. S. (2025). “Perceived effectiveness and intrusiveness of school security countermeasures among parents, students, and staff." Environment, Systems, and Decisions, 45. doi: 10.1007/s10669-025-10004-7

Dormady, N., A. Roa-Henriquez, C. Snider, and A. Rose. (2024). “Cost-Effective Business Resilience Decision Making." Natural Hazard Science, https://oxfordre.com/naturalhazardscience/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389407.001.0001/acrefore-9780199389407-e-506

Hall, R., Caprariello, A., Patel, A. (2025). “Academic Freedom, Confidentiality, and Security." Published in Worldviews and Values in Higher Education, Rao, M.B., Singh, A. and Rao, P.M. (Ed.), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 83-112. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83549-634-320251007

Holmes, J. & von Winterfeldt, D. (2025). Evaluating compliance with UN security council resolution 1540 on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Risk Analysis, https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.17697

Hunt, K., Güney, S., Zhuang, J., & John, R. S. (2024). “On the disclosure of defensive posture: Adversarial belief formation and target selection decisions." Production and Operations Management, doi: 10.1177/10591478241309530

Kapadia, K., Unson, I., Byrd, K., Zhuang, J., & John, R. S. (2025). “Behavioral validation for a game-theoretic model of attacker strategic decisions, signaling, and deterrence in multi-layer security for soft targets." Risk Analysis, doi: 10.1111/risa.17720

Roknaldin, A., Quiao, A., Kruke, L., John, R.S., & von Winterfeldt, D. (2025). Reducing carbon emissions from student commuting. Environment Systems and Decisions, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-024-09996-5

Scurich, N. & John, R. S. (2025). “Relative impact of underreporting and desistance on the Dark Figure of sexual recidivism." Behavioral Sciences and the Law, doi: 10.1002/bsl.2715

Sleboda, P., Bruine de Bruin, W., Segre Cohen, A., Drummond Otten, C., Lutzke, L., Arvai., J. (2025). “Fear, anger, and COVID-19 risk: A longitudinal US study." Journal of Risk Research, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13669877.2025.2485037

Straga, M., Mäntylä, T., Del Missier, F., Bruine de Bruin, W., Florean, I., Zamon, D. (2025). “The green decision maker: Restoring decision making through exposure to environmental stimuli." Journal of Environmental Psychology, 101, 102506, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494424002792

Sam Chaterjee, Senior Fellow, was elected as the President of the Society for Research Analysis (SRA) Resilience Analysis Specialty Group (RASG). As President of the RASG, Chatterjee will chair the RASG meeting at the next annual meeting of SRA and work with SRA officials to organize additional meetings and panels.

Richard John was reappointed as the USC Department of Psychology’s Area Head in Quantitative Methods and Computational Psychology. He also received a new appointment as Director, Undergraduate Research Honors Program, in Psychology.

Adam Rose’s students Ryan Condensa and Nathaniel Gunderson are recipients of the Price Dean’s Merit Award. Ryan also received the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award in the Masters of Public Policy Program. Nathaniel Gundersen also received the Masters of Urban Planning Gordon Whitnall Award for superior academic achievement in the study of planning.

A delegation of 12 program heads from Indonesia visited CREATE to learn how American society works together to resist violent extremism, including government, academia, community organizations, religious communities, and the private sector. Director Randolph Hall presented CREATE’s strategy to reduce threats, mitigate emergencies and build resistance.

Adam Rose was quoted in stories about the uneven economic impact of the Los Angeles (L.A.) wildfires: Los Angeles Times, USA News, and Daily Mail. He was also quoted in Vox in a story about the price tag of the LA fires, interviewed on Spectrum 1 TV on attacks on EV mandates and their implications for wildfires, quoted in a Los Angeles Times column discussing the resilience and adaptability of L.A. in the face of natural disasters and urban challenges, quoted in the Orange County Register on L.A. wildfires’ economic toll, was interviewed for the Price Post and quoted in a Los Angeles Daily News article on threats to withhold disaster aid.

Randolph Hall wrote about wildfire prevention and mitigation in the Viterbi News. His note explains how models of disease transmission can guide strategies to protect against wildfire, focusing on minimizing susceptibility of houses to embers and flames.

Burcin Becerik-Gerber hosted a workshop with experts in public security, emergency response, first response, and safety and security engineering and design as part of National Science Foundation funded research on advancing emergency preparedness and planning. The EVOLVE (Elicitation and Verification of Learning via Experts) method was used to validate simulation models and gather critical “what-if" scenarios that matter most to practitioners.

Wandi Bruine de Bruin delivered a keynote presentation at the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and European Association for Decision Making Virtual Symposium on Climate Change in January 2025. She was also the keynote speaker at the SRA Nordic Chapter and was an invited speaker at the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, in March.

Randolph Hall will present Supply Chain Resilience to the DHS Community of Interest on Supply Chains on June 11. His presentation will address fundamentals of supply chain design and operation in the context of shocks, national security and economy. A system design — CIRT-SC — for supply chain resilience will be presented, envisioned as an integrated network of public and private organizations, working in unison toward reliably transporting trusted products and their components. His undergraduate students Della Smith, Aishu Sivamurgan and Tyler Milliren presented their research on innovation, disaster response and supply chains at the Center for Undergraduate Research in Viterbi Engineering (CURVE) research symposium.

Richard John presented “Closing the gap: Fitting square pegs into round holes" at the SRA annual meeting, December, 2024. John, along with Kapadia, K., Unson, I., Byrd, K. & Zhuang, J. also presented “Behavioral validation of deterrence for multilayer security games" at the SRA annual meeting.

Scott Farrow presented a seminar to an audience of US Citizenship and Immigration Service and US Coast Guard employees on the modeling and valuation of final migrant outcomes including removal, asylum, or unresolved but remaining in the US.

Fynnwin Prager presented “Evaluating the Impacts of Telecommuting and Remote Services on Vehicle Miles Traveled and Greenhouse Gas Emission in California" (with co-authors Priya Silwal, Parveen K Chhetri, Tianjun Lu) at the American Geophysical Union 2024 conference.

Adam Rose served on a panel on “The Los Angeles Wildfires and Housing" at a meeting of the San Diego chapter of the Land Economics Society in March. He also presented the webinar, “Economic Consequence Analysis" to the Homeland Security Initiative, Cal State University Dominguez Hills in January, presented the paper, “Economic Consequences of Climate Action Plans: Neither Recession nor Boom," at the SRA Annual Meeting and presented the paper, “Economic Impacts of Complex Disasters Affecting the Twin Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (co-authored with N. Miller, Z. Chen, F. Roberts, A. Tucci, and L. Vijayagopal), at the Annual Meeting of the North American Regional Science Council.

Jun Zhuang, Senior Research Fellow from University of Buffalo, presented Game Theory, Data Analytics and Disaster Management for USC’s Epstein Institute seminar series.

Fynnwin Prager, Research Fellow at California State University Long Beach, received “Build Your Career Pathway" Custom-Built AI Chatbot funding from California Learning Lab ($200,000), based on work developing a more focused AI Chatbot to support Homeland Security Enterprise career pathways.