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Inside The Box

Inside The Box, Issue 1.3: Special-Event Security: Super Bowl XLV

A special event of national significance is a major undertaking for any public safety and security team. When the event in question is the National Football League’s annual championship face-off—aka the Super Bowl—the task can be truly daunting. This year’s event at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, was one of the biggest yet. For a full two weeks prior to the February 6th game, there were hundreds of concerts, parties, press conferences and other events, taking place in three different cities spread over an area of more than 9,000 square miles. Read more…

Converged Security: Making Sense of Intelligence and Forensics (IQT Quarterly Reprint)

Digital Sandbox CEO Bryan Ware explores the idea of a new kind of converged security, one that recognizes how merged our physical and cyber worlds have become, and the impact of that convergence on our approach to intelligence.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Fall 2009 issue of IQT Quarterly, a publication of the Central Intelligence Agency’s In-Q-Tel technology-investment arm.

Inside The Box, Issue 1.2: All Disasters Are Local

Anyone who follows the news will be familiar with earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters—or, as we call them in the risk profession, “natural hazards.” Indeed, many will have experienced at least one of these hazards first-hand.

This second paper in our Inside the Box series uses selected natural hazard events to introduce a number of fundamental risk management concepts, and to illustrate how risk managers determine where such hazards are most likely to occur and what people or assets or systems in those locations would be most seriously impacted by them. We then explain how can they use this information in crafting responses that make maximum use of the limited preparedness assets at their disposal.

We believe that the more information risk managers start with and the better they can visualize their risk environments, the more likely they will be to zero in on their highest-priority risks and develop sound strategies to minimize them.

Inside The Box, Issue 1.1: The Data Paradox

Information overload is not a new problem. But in today’s environment of cross-discipline complexity, relentless data flows and warp-speed decision cycles—all of it greatly facilitated by technology—the scope and severity of the problem are unprecedented. Everyone, from individuals to organizations and even entire governments, is now stretched to the limit trying to harness and make sense of data in the service of better decision-making.

This paper, the first in Digital Sandbox’s Inside the Box series, describes the two most common approaches to data analytics—one driven by data, the other by modeling and analysis—and explains why we favor the latter method as a powerful tool decision-makers can use to think through and visualize complex problems, and arrive at defensible and transparent decisions quickly and affordably.

Population in Homeland Security Risk Applications

Population is an extremely valuable part of the overall risk picture and represents 40% of DHS’ homeland security grant risk formula. Population is relevant for any given scenario and is a valuable component of local homeland security capabilities including public warnings, evacuations, sheltering, injuries, and fatalities. Identifying a defensible number and demographic profile (e.g. age, gender, poverty) of people within a given area is vital to planning and responding based on the risk to a given area’s population.

The consequences of certain threat types are much more population-centric than asset-centric. For example, an earthquake can cause higher rates of fatality, hospitalization, sheltering, and long-term social welfare than an IED which is immediate and typically on a smaller-scale. Local jurisdictions need to approach population risk differently for each. Furthermore, some threat types affect certain population types much differently than others. For example, hurricanes affect socially vulnerable populations more than other people. Identifying these people prior to landfall is valuable to emergency planning. According to Census data, the most commonly used source for population, no one lives in the World Trade Center or Pentagon. However, on September 11th 2,729 people died in these buildings. As this example illustrates, an in-depth understanding of dynamic population is vital to homeland security and emergency management. This paper outlines Digital Sandbox’s approach to building a unique and defensible estimation of population and key demographic variables.

South Carolina “Gets Visual” with Digital Sandbox Risk Analytics

As part of its Geographic Information System (GIS) strategy, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) identified the need to add critical value-added applications to the agency’s existing ESRI GIS framework. Risk Management was identified as a key focus area for this initiative. SLED’s goal was to upgrade their solution to deliver the best possible risk management capability.

Digital Sandbox Powers Jacksonville Area Risk Management

In mid-2008, the urban area encompassing Jacksonville, Florida and its surrounding communities accepted a major challenge: to meet the goals of its FEMA risk management grants, the region had to complete detailed field (vulnerability) assessments of 150 of its most critical assets – in less than 2.5 years. The race was on: the Jacksonville area needed a system for managing its most serious risks by January 2011.

Measuring Preparedness: Assessing the Impact of the Homeland Security Grant Program

Since the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003, DHS has awarded over 28.7 billion dollars in grant funds to states, locals, territories and tribal entities to enhance prevention, protection, response, and recovery efforts. Yet, the homeland security community continues to struggle with measuring the impact these investments have made toward improving preparedness. The 2009 Federal Preparedness Report highlighted that the nation lacks risk-based performance metrics, accurate data, and analytical tools to measure how these investments have improved preparedness. This thesis outlines the challenges of measuring preparedness across the numerous federal funding streams, assesses the prevalence of these factors, and proposes five recommendations for improving the capacity to answer how prepared we are;how prepared we need to be; and how we close the gap between the two. (included by permission of The Naval Post-Graduate School, Pamela Broughton, author)

Critical Infrastructure Protection - A Look at Current Best Practices in Homeland Security

Listen as Brian Wright, Critical Infrastructure Program Director of the New York State Office of Homeland Security discusses how they built such a successful program, what lessons they learned along the way, and how your organization can benefit from their example.

Partners in Protection

Defining the proper relations between federal, state, local and tribal governments is one of the keys to effective homeland security—and one of the trickiest balancing acts in the nation. With the benefit of experience and a perspective from the heart of homeland security, a veteran official looks at the challenges DHS has faced and makes some suggestions for the future.

» Read more: Partners in Protection

Risk Analysis and Capabilities Assessment

Digital Sandbox employs a “capability build-up” methodology to using risk to identify gaps and inform investment priorities.

Benchmarking Risk Priorities

Digital Sandbox has conducted a number of scenario-based analyses of the risks facing individual states and urban areas from terrorist attacks. This paper reports on the common features in the distributions of risk to critical infrastructure in the studied areas.

Establishing Effective Risk Management For The Long Haul

Risk has become the watchword of Homeland Security. The conversation has changed from “is it necessary?” to “what are the best practices for implementing a world class risk management program for my jurisdiction?”

Tampa Bay, Florida UASI

Like many Sunbelt regions, the Tampa Bay UASI has experienced explosive growth, including an expanding population of more than 2.5 million and 15 million visitors each year.

In order to protect its diverse critical infrastructure and population, the Tampa Bay UASI sought to establish a regional approach to risk management.

» Read more: Tampa Bay, Florida UASI

New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP)

The Challenge:
Protecting New Jersey’s nearly nine million citizens and miles of critical infrastructure is the top priority of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP). In early 2004, however, NJOHSP faced a number of challenges to identifying, deterring and detecting terrorist-related activities.

Defending the Super Bowl - A Look at Dynamic Risk Management for a Major Event

Recently, we had the privilege of supporting our long standing Tampa customer with a unique risk management solution for the Super Bowl.

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