Some of CREATE’s first year research was presented at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Conference entitled “Working Together: R&D Partnerships in Homeland Security" on April 26, 27 & 28 in Boston.
CREATE Presentations:
CREATE Co-Director, Randy Hall, presented the center in the Homeland Security Centers of Excellence Showcase on Tuesday, April 26th the first workshop of the conference.
CREATE researcher Terry O’Sullivan presented “External Terrorist Threates to Civilian Airlines: Risk Analysis of MANPADS Other Ballistic Weaponds Future Threates and Possible Countermeasures Policies."
Abstract: Policymakers now recognize growing terrorism threats to civilian aircraft and related critical infrastructure a function of both rising susceptibility to attack, due to increasing weapons proliferation, and vulnerability from increasingly lethal weapons technology, which reduces attack survivability. Man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) are known to be in the possession of anti-Western terrorist groups, including al Qaeda. Less well known are the significant threats to civilian airliners from other external weapons systems which will further broaden the civilian airline threat spectrum. Some of these weapons could be used to damage or destroy aircraft in the air or on the ground at airports, may be cheaper and more easily available than MANPADS and weapons might be used in tactically sophisticated ways and/or possess increasing lethality potential because of advances in explosives and ordnance technology and to the unique vulnerabilities of civilian/commercial aircraft and airports. This paper analyzes some of the key comparative risk dilemmas in assessing the clearly rising, current and future external weapons attack threats and vulnerabilities for civilian aviation.
The conference also hosted Poster Sessions. The following is a list of those associated with CREATE:
- “Diagnostic Tools to Estimate Consequences of Terrorism Attacks Against Critical Infrastructure" by Professor Rae Zimmerman and Carlos Restrepo, New York University-Wagner, Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems.
- “Swedish Research on Critical Infrastructure Protection – Vulnerability Analysis of Electric Power Delivery Systems", by Ake J. Holmgren, Visiting Scholar, New York University-Wagner, Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems.
- “Game Theoretic Models for Security and Critical Infrastructure Protection" by Ashish Gupta, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- “Human Resource Allocation and Staffing Decisions Through an Integrated Scheduling Model: An Application to Emergency Operations Centers" by Jennifer Russell, University of Southern California
- “Terrorism Risk Analyst Workbench" by Michael Orosz, University of Southern California
- “The Cyber Defense Technology Experimental Research Network" by Terry Benzel, University of Southern California