RISK QUADRUPLET: INTEGRATING ASSESSMENTS OF THREAT, VULNERABILITY, CONSEQUENCE, AND PERCEPTION FOR HOMELAND SECURITY AND HOMELAND DEFENSE

摘要

Risk to an asset, such as a critical infrastructure, is often considered to be a function of threat, vulnerability, and consequence. It has long been a challenge to integrate these three disparate assessments to establish an overall picture of risk to a given asset. Additionally, there are many different types of risk assessments performed on assets and those different assessments explore risk from different perspectives. Is the asset a critical power plant, essential to electricity generation? Is it a large dam, critical to the water supply? Is it a major road, critical to transportation? Or is it a major tourist attraction, critical to national morale? Or, like the Hoover Dam, is it all of these things? Which risk assessment is "right"? How can all of these risk assessments be integrated? Are certain risk assessments more important than others? Obviously, risk is a function of our perceptions and those perceptions can influence our understanding of threat, vulnerability, and consequence. A risk quadruplet methodology is proposed to systematically integrate risk perceptions with assessments of threat, vulnerability, and consequence in a traceable, reproducible, and meaningful manner. Finally, the viability of the risk quadruplet model is explored by leveraging Evidential Reasoning, a Multi Criteria Decision Analysis technique, along with simulated data for threat, vulnerability, consequence, and perception.