Risk Quadruplet: Integrating Assessments of Threat, Vulnerability, Consequence, and Perception for Homeland Security and Homeland Defense

Risk for homeland security and homeland defense is often considered to be a function of threat, vulnerability, and consequence. But what is that function? And are we defining and measuring these terms consistently? Threat, vulnerability, and consequence assessments are conducted, often separately, and data from one assessment could be drastically different from that of another due to inconsistent definitions of terms and measurements, differing data collection methods, or varying data sources. It has also long been a challenge to integrate these three disparate assessments to establish an overall picture of risk to a given asset. Further, many agencies conduct these assessments and there is little to no sharing of data, methodologies, or results vertically (between federal, state, and local decision-makers) or horizontally (across the many different sectors), which results in duplication of efforts and conflicting risk assessment results. Obviously, risk is a function of our perceptions and those perceptions can influence our understanding of threat, vulnerability, and consequence. Some assessments rely on perceptions (elicited from subject matter experts) in order to qualify or quantify threat, vulnerability, and consequence. Others exclude perception altogether, relying on objective data, if available. Rather than fault the subjectivity of our perceptions, or muddle objective assessments with personal opinions, it makes sense to embrace our perceptions, but segregate them as a unique component of risk. A risk quadruplet is proposed to systematically collect and integrate assessments of threat, vulnerability, consequence, and perception, such that each dimension can be explored uniquely, and such that all four components can be aggregated into an overall risk assessment in a consistent, transparent, traceable, and reproducible manner. The risk quadruplet draws from the fields of homeland security, homeland defense, systems engineering, and even psychology to develop a model of risk that integrates all four assessments using multicriteria decision analysis. The model has undergone preliminary validation and has proven to be a viable solution for ranking assets based on the four proposed components of risk

Perceptually Realistic Behavior through Alibi Generation

Real-time pedestrian simulation for open-world games involves aggressive behavior simplification and culling to keep computational cost under control, but it is diffficult to predict whether these techniques will become unrealistic in certain situations. We propose a method of perceptually simulating highly realistic pedestrian behavior in virtual cities in real- time. Designers build a highly realistic simulation, from which a perceptually identical “perceptual simulation” is generated. Although the perceptual simulation simulates only a small portion of the world at a time, and does so with inexpensive approximations, it can be statistically guaranteed that the results are perceptually indistinguishable from those of the original simulation

SSOS: A Moving Object Image Search Tool for Asteroid Precovery

It is very difficult to find archival images of solar system objects. While regular archive searches can find images at a fixed location, they cannot find images of moving targets. Archival images have become increasingly useful to galactic and stellar astronomers the last few years but, until now, solar system researchers have been at a disadvantage in this respect. The Solar System Object Search (SSOS) at the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre allows users to search for images of moving objects. SSOS accepts as input either a list of observations, an object designation, a set of orbital elements, or a user-generated ephemeris for an object. It then searches for images containing that object over a range of dates. The user is then presented with a list of images containing that object from a variety of archives. Initially created to search the CFHT MegaCam archive, SSOS has been extended to other telescope archives including Gemini, Subaru/SuprimeCam, HST, several ESO instruments and the SDSS for a total of 6.5 million images. The SSOS tool is located on the web at: http://www.cadc.hia.nrc.gc.ca/ssosComment: Accepted for publication in PASP. Service available at: http://www.cadc.hia.nrc.gc.ca/sso

Generating Plausible Individual Agent Movements From Spatio-Temporal Occupancy Data

We introduce the Spatio-Temporal Agent Motion Model, a datadriven representation of the behavior and motion of individuals within a space over the course of a day. We explore different representations for this model, incorporating different modes of individual behavior, and describe how crowd simulations can use this model as source material for dynamic and realistic behaviors

Research Methodology and Rural Economy in Northern Nigeria

SUMMARY The principles of methodology of a research project in Northern Nigeria involving the collection of both farm management and nutrition data are described. This was a study of breadth rather than depth and so clear decisions were made about what was to be collected on the basis of time costs. The use of ‘registered?non registered’, ‘continuous—one point’ and ‘data cores’ are described and discussed. From these follow the means of sample stratification using these principles. Some ideas for improving RRA are suggested. RESUMEN La metodología de investigación y la economía rural del norte de Nigeria Se describen los principios en que se basa la metodología de un proyecto de investigación en el norte de Nigeria, en el que se reunieron datos de información acerca de la administración de propiedades rurales y de las características de nutrición. Este estudio fue más extensivo que intensivo y, por esta razón, se pudieron tomar decisiones claras acerca de los datos a tomar en relación con el coste correspondiente al tiempo invertido. Se describe y analiza el empleo de las modalidades de ‘registrado/no registrado’, ‘continuo/un solo punto’ y ‘núcleos de datos’. De aquí se obtienen las medias correspondientes a la estratificación de muestras relativas a dichos principios. Se hacen algunas sugerencias para mejorar la Rápida Evaluación Rural. RESUME Méthodologie de la recherche et économie rurale au Nigéria du Nord Expose les principes de la méthodologie d'un projet de recherche au Nigeria du Nord comportant le recueil de données agricoles et alimentaires. Etude générale plutôt qu'en profondeur: des décisions ont dû être prises pour savoir quelles données réunir sur la base du coût. Description et discussion des données ‘enregistrées ou non enregistrées’, ‘continues ou ponctuelles’ et des nucléus de données’. D'oú d'écoulent les moyens de stratification des exemples recourant à ces principes. Quelques idées sont avancées pour l'amélioration de l'évaluation rurale rapide