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.
The U.S. Coast Guard employs some gaming and gaming-adjacent approaches for such activities as concept development, strategic planning, engagement, and training. But conducting gaming more formally could help the service expand its analytic, training, and engagement tool sets. In this Perspective, the authors discuss what more the service might do to employ gaming, and why.
RAND authors analyzed responses from 2,389 survey respondents about public safety, election integrity, and preparedness of local officials to manage the November 2020 election in the pandemic context. Responses indicate that although most voters say they believe that voting will be safe and that their vote will be counted despite the pandemic, those who question election safety and some who question election integrity appear less likely to vote.
Researchers conducted a study to propose new approaches for determining staffing needs in the U.S. Secret Service's highest-priority administrative, professional, and technical functions. Using process mapping and business-case analysis, the team created staffing models. This report documents the team's methods, implementation considerations, and lessons learned for future workforce studies.
Researchers created a software tool to help determine staffing needs in the U.S. Secret Service's highest-priority administrative, professional, and technical functions. This user guide describes the tool, which consists of Visio process mapping and Excel spreadsheet calculations; documents its features; and provides detailed instructions for completing procedures using the tool.
State election laws on early voting, remote voting, and voter registration could have implications for the execution of an election under conditions brought on by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. In this report, the authors summarize state election laws on early voting, remote voting, and voter registration, and they discuss the potential implications for the execution of the November 2020 general election.
Several voting and registration options are available to states to ensure the safety of elections despite the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. This report outlines these options, considering the factors that officials will have to examine in determining how to conduct the election safely; the advantages and challenges of each approach; and the levels of risk regarding safety, integrity, access, and logistics.
State election laws on voter registration, remote voting, and early voting could have implications for the execution of an election under conditions brought on by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. This tool supplements a companion report and provides state-by-state granular details, including references to relevant state laws, about each of these aspects of voting.
Our results suggest that the savings associated with replacing subsidies with our proposed means-tested subsidy would be $183 million per year if all households in the study area hold NFIP policies, or a savings of approximately $3800 per policy.
In this article, we present the Analysis of the Resilience of Communities to Disasters (ARC-D) toolkit, a practical toolkit developed by an international aid organization, GOAL, over the course of a decade of practice.
The U.S. Coast Guard has an opportunity to plot the path to determine service-specific uses for the expanding field of data science, identify a strategy and driving mechanisms, and begin laying out a plan. This Perspective outlines the role that data science can play in decisionmaking processes and provides a selected set of key questions and sensitivities for the Coast Guard to consider in developing its future usage of data science.
The U.S. Coast Guard's motto is Semper Paratus — always ready. But for what? This report describes an approach to developing scenarios to aid in decisionmaking under deep uncertainty through the Evergreen strategic foresight initiative. The scenarios presented here focus on readiness, but the approach can be adapted for other contexts.
This Perspective describes several ways in which the U.S. Coast Guard can effectively recruit and retain its future workforce by providing greater transparency in personnel management practices. The work was inspired by the emphasis on transparency at a 2019 Coast Guard Evergreen V workshop called Workforce 2040, at which participants discussed emerging and potential future challenges to Coast Guard operations.
Face recognition technologies (FRTs) have many practical security-related purposes, but advocacy groups and individuals have expressed apprehensions about their use. This report highlights the high-level privacy and bias implications of FRT systems. The authors propose a heuristic with two dimensions — consent status and comparison type — to help determine a proposed FRT's level of privacy and accuracy. They also identify privacy and bias concerns.
The Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) is designed to enhance security at U.S. ports. It demonstrates that the holder has passed a Transportation Security Administration security threat assessment and is required of anyone with unescorted access to a secure area at a regulated facility. This report provides the findings from an assessment of the TWIC program, along with the assessors' recommendations.
The illicit antiquities market is fueled by a well-documented rise in looting at archaeological sites and a fear that the proceeds of such looting may be financing terrorism or rogue states. In this report, the authors compile evidence from numerous open sources to outline the major policy-relevant characteristics of that market and to propose the way forward for developing policies intended to disrupt illicit networks.
Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center researchers sought to establish a causal connection between surveillance technology and outcomes relevant to border security. The study demonstrated the promises and limitations of quasi-experimental statistical methods for evaluating the effects or effectiveness of different border-enforcement measures.
Remarks presented to the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee at a virtual roundtable on May 5, 2020.
The authors explain how autonomous systems could affect the Marine Transportation System and shape the Coast Guard's roles, responsibilities, and capabilities. Legitimate actors, criminals, and attackers, as well as the Coast Guard and its partner agencies, will increasingly use autonomous technologies. The Coast Guard will need to consider them in its strategies, policies, concepts of operations, and tactics.
We review case examples to illustrate how post-disaster policies may influence the nature, pace, and inclusiveness of community recovery.
Because U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) rotary-wing aircraft are nearing their ends of life, the USCG is reassessing its airpower needs for its current missions and future operational requirements. Researchers assessed what airpower mixes could help the USCG execute its missions across the entire geographic domain for operations in the next 30 years. In this report, they document their findings and make recommendations.
To support the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) across its missions, the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC). This is the center's 2018–2019 annual report.
Researchers are helping the U.S. Department of Homeland Security understand how social media might be better leveraged for situational awareness—particularly location information—in U.S. Coast Guard response operations.
Social media can enhance situational awareness in response operations, but using social media this way poses challenges. Researchers sought to contribute to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) mission to ensure resilience to disasters by helping DHS understand whether and how social media might be better leveraged for such situational awareness. The primary focus of this research was on U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) response operations.
To support U.S. Department of Homeland Security efforts to prioritize capability investments, this report examines trends in small unmanned aerial system development, the features that are likely to aid nefarious users, and how such actors could use an sUAS (or multiple systems) to conduct various types of operations—from surveilling U.S. government facilities to dispersing a chemical agent at a large public event.
In this report, the authors explore approaches for understanding, inventorying, and modeling cybersecurity implications of the rapid growth in drone usage, focusing specifically on current vulnerabilities and future trends. The authors propose conceptual approaches meant to enable the enumeration and categorization of drone-related cyber threats and explore some of the potential benefits and challenges of modeling the commercial drone threat.
