The Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) conducts research and analysis for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in two program areas, the Acquisition and Development Program, and the Strategy, Policy, and Operations Program.
This report is intended to inform National Critical Function stakeholders about developing actionable contingency plans. It describes contingency planning for a significant cyber incident, focusing on the importance of planning, the process of developing a plan, and options for operationalizing a plan. It summarizes the major concepts that are explored in detail in a separate how-to guide.
In research for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, analysts sought ways to streamline, simplify, and strengthen the U.S. emergency management system, assessing how overlap, duplication, and fragmentation could affect implementation and outcomes. They propose options — some broad and transformative and others on a smaller scale — and discuss trade-offs of each.
A future price forecast can help the Federal Emergency Management Agency and communities seeking its Public Assistance estimate construction costs. Researchers created a framework, relying on expected per capita damage and rates of in-migration to the area, for determining when such a forecast could be useful.
Large-scale disaster recovery projects in isolated areas likely require unique future price forecasting. This brief describes an occupational analysis and model to estimate the effects of recovery on the price of labor, materials, and equipment.
The scale of Puerto Rico's recovery efforts after Hurricane María means that these efforts are likely to fundamentally change Puerto Rico's economy in terms of labor, materials, and equipment. Researchers aimed to develop estimates of future construction costs and build factors that cost estimators can apply to current costs to reflect the future cost of construction. This report documents their approach, data, findings, and recommendations.
Climate change is contributing to more frequent and more severe disasters. In this video, three climate researchers discuss climate change and risks for disasters in the United States. They focus on several regions: the Arctic, the Caribbean, the Northeast, and the Gulf states. They examine how climate effects and hazards are affecting communities in the region, ongoing adaptation activities, and remaining needs and opportunities.
The number of automated sensors and devices connected to wireless networks will continue to grow as fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks come online. In this report, researchers discuss how the United States should seek to balance the potential gains of the 5G era with the potential loss of privacy and of control of personal data.
The United States has a long history of preparing for and responding to large-scale incidents affecting public safety and homeland security. However, it does not have comparable experience in responding to cyber incidents. This report examines U.S. processes for non-cyber emergency management and whether U.S. officials can learn from these events to help public and private sector stakeholders improve preparations for response to cyber attacks.
This report describes fifth-generation (5G) network security, the 5G supply chain, competition in 5G equipment and mobile device markets, where the United States has security advantages over China, and how to preserve those advantages in the 5G competition between the United States and China. The report provides recommendations for securing 5G networks and mobile devices of the United States, its allies, and foreign partners.
This report presents best practices in risk assessment; challenges in implementing the National Critical Function (NCF) risk assessment framework to characterize risk that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses to critical infrastructure; recommendations for improving the framework; and suggestions for further characterizing NCFs' interdependence, vulnerability, and geographic variation to improve risk assessment processes.
National Critical Functions (NCFs) are government and private-sector functions so vital that their disruption would debilitate security, the economy, public health, or safety. Researchers developed a risk management framework to assess and manage the risk that climate change poses to the NCFs and use the framework to assess 27 priority NCFs. This report details the risk assessment portions of the framework.
We present how remote sensing data was incorporated into the assessment and planning process, focusing on the applications for Puerto Rico's natural resources in the months following the hurricanes.
Based on the premise that investing in hazard risk mitigation will reduce spending on recovery and response, the federal Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program recognizes that equity issues are important in helping communities' mitigation efforts. Researchers identified ways to address these issues while enhancing the accuracy of natural hazard assessment in future BRIC grant decisionmaking, as described in this report.
The Transportation Security Administration screens 100 percent of checked baggage at airports. One way to improve baggage screening is to incorporate recent advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning. The authors of this Perspective describe the current state, challenges, and outlook for these technologies, using the agency's Electronic Baggage Screening Program as a case study.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has deployed several emerging technologies that affect the American public. This Perspective explores how public perception can influence the success of government technology deployments, identifies different methods of assessing public perception, and suggests ways in which government agencies might account for public perception across the technology deployment life cycle.
We discuss how AI can be used in modeling, simulation, wargaming, and combinations thereof, focusing largely on the strategic political-military level.
These technical appendixes present the in-depth information and analyses that informed the findings and recommendations contained in the Commission's final report.
This initial report describes how the Commission planned to conduct the research and analysis leading to its final report.
This final report describes items involving the illegal manufacturing and trafficking of synthetic opioids.
In this webinar, senior social scientist Melissa Finucane reviews the complex nature of social equity—including contextual, procedural, and distributional equity dimensions—and how a robust, evidence-based approach is needed to measure progress toward equity in disaster contexts. Challenges in identifying underserved groups and selecting appropriate equity metrics are discussed in the context of current policy initiatives to advance racial equity.
This brochure describes RAND Corporation research and analysis in this area, with examples from such diverse areas as organizational planning and implementation and cybersecurity workforce recruitment, retention, and management.
A collection of RAND's interdisciplinary work on immigration and on managing the U.S. border.
Two researchers at the forefront of collection and analysis of data on terrorism recount their experiences, challenges, and achievements. After discussing how to define terrorism, they explore the evolution of RAND Corporation databases about terrorist incidents, groups, individual attributes, and mindsets. They note challenges and criticisms that arose along the way, then conclude with lessons learned and thoughts about the future.
Changing U.S. Coast Guard culture requires addressing recruiting, training, retaining, and empowering the future workforce. This Perspective describes organizational culture, observations made and experiences described by participants in strategic-foresight workshops, examples of other organizations addressing culture issues, research on organizational culture, and how the Coast Guard can leverage this knowledge in reshaping its future culture.
This study is the first to examine disaster risk creation from an organizational perspective, and the first to focus explicitly on how disaster management agencies can shape risk creation.
