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Colleges and universities that educate aspiring homeland security professionals are duty-bound to supply a national workforce that is capable and adequately prepared to meet the National Preparedness Goal. It is perhaps not an exaggeration to suggest that developing a qualified homeland security (HLS) workforce could be considered a matter of national security. Indeed, an appropriately educated workforce is not only (at least implicit) part of the current FEMA National Preparedness Goal, it was identified as a national security imperative as early as 2001 by the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. A baseline set of education standards for homeland security education would, at the very least, ensure that academic programs would consistently graduate a workforce that has a common set of competencies aligned to the needs of both public and private sector actors engaged in domestic and national security. In turn, employers and students alike would better understand not only what homeland security is, but what HLS graduates can do. Many mature disciplines ultimately use education standards to not only define themselves, but to sanctify and protect their professional boundaries. Nutritionists, for example, are professionals protected by registration, and licensure (as well as certification in some cases). Yet to become a registered dietician, one needs to graduate from an accredited academic degree program, the basis of which is compliance to a set of education (i.e., accreditation) standards assessed by an external organization. In the same way, and to advance the HLS profession, it makes sense to think that HLS practitioners should have educational backgrounds (like doctors or lawyers) that share some common set of educational competencies. To date, we observe that higher education's response as to how to best educate students to enter the homeland security enterprise has been to consider homeland security as a meta-discipline, or a discipline of disciplines. As such, homeland security curricula tend to include faculty, courses and student learning outcomes from a variety of other disciplines such as law, business, management, political science, international relations, emergency management, etc. Second, we note that academic homeland security education is still largely characterized as an emergent discipline. That is, the core theory of what is and is not "homeland security" remains under-developed. Indeed, it is accurate to characterize homeland security more as a "practice discipline" such as medicine, nursing or law (each of which, by the way, shares the characteristic of being meta-disciplines), albeit a practice with a growing literature and experience basis as well as a theoretical basis. This project leveraged the collective expertise of subject matter experts over roughly a 3-year period to emulate the structure and approach used by these better-established disciplines and create a consensus set of HLS education standards. Created were nine knowledge domains and a set of competencies (aka knowledge, skills and abilities as student learning outcomes) per domain. Taken together, such a set of knowledge domains and competencies (the minimum set of skills, knowledge, and abilities students of homeland security acquire academically) would describe the professional boundaries of the homeland security discipline. A major remaining challenge is how best to conceptualize and implement a system that integrates a set of competencies into all academic HLS programs nationwide. The paper tackles this issue by proposing a system of "voluntary academic accountability" from all academic institutions that offers a bona fide peer review of undergraduate level homeland security programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Congress mandated the Department of Homeland Security to regulate chemical facilities with the goal of increasing security at these facilities to prevent future terrorist attacks. In 2007, DHS issued an interim rule known as the chemical facility anti-terrorism standards (CFATS). This paper takes a look at CFATS 5 years after implementation and discusses the achievements and the challenges confronting this important piece of legislation. In addition, this paper poses several questions and discusses some CFATS issues and concerns that have far-reaching implications for CFATS stakeholders, homeland security, and emergency management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 9/11, colleges and universities throughout the nation have developed and implemented new courses and degree programs in homeland security and emergency management. A valued learning outcome of these programs, like most university studies in general, is to develop critical thinking skills in students. However, this can be a challenge because the nature of critical thinking and approaches to teaching and assessing it in higher education are debatable. This paper provides a brief overview of the literature on critical thinking, and looks at the importance of developing these skills in students of homeland security programs so that they are able to adapt successfully in a rapidly changing environment. Finally, this paper discusses two teaching strategies, guided class discussions and case studies, to develop critical thinking that have been used by the teacher in undergraduate and gradate level courses in homeland security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the roles of specific state attorneys general in the United States and assesses their degree of involvement in promoting and sustaining homeland security. This paper begins with a general overview of attorneys general, the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) and the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR). Then, this paper provides a section on the contributions that the state attorneys general make to homeland security in the states of New Jersey, New York, and Florida. What comes afterwards is an assessment of the possibility of an increased effort and participation from these state governments to sustain homeland security. This paper ends with a discussion that also offers suggestions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to draw out some of the implications of the 9/11 Commission Report for California's Homeland Defense and Security and to address government failures identified in that report. The question the paper addresses is: How can we design organizational arrangements and staff them to institutionalize imagination, foster organizational adaptability, and overcome ineffective operational management? A Matrixed Networks Model is proposed to "restructure" the way California government is organized to achieve the performance objectives alluded to in the above research question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During October 2014, the US experienced several cases of Ebola viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF). These occurrences arose from infected people entering the US including as well, physicians and nurses contracting the disease in the course of rendering medical care to the infected. The extent of the outbreak, as limited as it fortunately was, revealed problems in preparedness and the technical protocols followed in dealing with such a virulent disease pathogen. It may even serve as a warning that US policies and practices in dealing with hyper-infectious and seriously communicable disease have fallen short and require technically critical reassessment in how the US should or may need to respond to such incurable pathogens that enter the country, regardless if a natural or a terrorist mediated event. The issue of individual rights against quarantine also arises. This paper offers examination and suggestions for official responses to safeguard the health and rights of all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of the Department of Homeland Security was a landmark in the history of the U.S. federal government. With the largest reorganization of the federal executive branch in decades, policymakers sought to group agencies with missions related to homeland security under one cabinet level official. It is natural to ask whether this reorganization has succeeded. One measure of that success would be public confidence in the competency of the department. In this paper, we report the results of a national poll which asked a variety of questions related to individuals' perceptions of the Department of Homeland Security. The results illustrate that the level of confidence in the competency of the Department of Homeland Security is generally high—though there are divisions among people’s evaluations based on party, religiosity, attention to terrorism, and education level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is considerable federal interest in disaster resilience as a mechanism for mitigating the impacts to local communities, yet the identification of metrics and standards for measuring resilience remain a challenge. This paper provides a methodology and a set of indicators for measuring baseline characteristics of communities that foster resilience. By establishing baseline conditions, it becomes possible to monitor changes in resilience over time in particular places and to compare one place to another. We apply our methodology to counties within the Southeastern United States as a proof of concept. The results show that spatial variations in disaster resilience exist and are especially evident in the rural/urban divide, where metropolitan areas have higher levels of resilience than rural counties. However, the individual drivers of the disaster resilience (or lack thereof)—social, economic, institutional, infrastructure, and community capacities—vary widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Security focused regulations have been largely exempt from the benefit-cost type of analysis required for major Federal regulations and done routinely in areas such as transportation, environment and safety. Among the reasons offered for exemption are the analytical difficulties of security issues involving complex or poorly understood probabilities and consequences. This paper investigates the magnitude of security focused regulations, a framework for developing an expected cost analysis of regulations, and the current "break-even" analysis used by the Department of Homeland Security. Key assumptions implicit in the current analysis are identified and suggestions are made for the difficult evolution of security regulations toward a more explicit benefit-cost analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Cyber Security Division (NCSD), under the US Department of Homeland Security oversees the nation-wide effort of securing and ensuring unimpeded use of the cyberspace domain. The NCSD hosts the Cyber Storm series of national cyber security exercises as an important component of the public-private cyber security partnership. This paper uses a case study approach to explore the motivations of private sector actors to contribute to the national cyber security regime by analyzing their participation in Cyber Storm II. This research tests the assumption that the private sector actors can be motivated to participate in the cooperative national security measures by empowering them to contribute to the development of the measures. It contains a literature review of cyber security challenges and current theories on self-regulation that are applicable to this partnership. The results suggest that the Department of Homeland Security has an opportunity to improve collaboration by demonstrating its ability to provide important cyber security information to the private sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns of a pandemic outbreak of influenza have been at the forefront of the homeland security and emergency management communities for the past several years. Until an actual pandemic occurs, the question of whether responsible agencies and their operational preparations can adequately handle a pandemic that impacts every jurisdiction will remain unanswered. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has taken the lead to handle this threat at the federal level, which includes establishing operational plans and developing training. It also includes developing a template for tabletop exercises, Tabletop Exercise for Pandemic Influenza Preparedness in Local Public Health Agencies, which can serve as a model for every jurisdictional level. The exercise is invaluable for public health planning, but there remains room for improvement: its design neglects some of the broader implications of the planning and coordination required of the first response community. This paper is designed to fit most suitably within emergency management and homeland security curriculum as an educational tool to prepare students for the complex realities of an influenza pandemic and the experience of a tabletop exercise. Beyond the classroom, it brings into focus many pandemic issues that exceed the scope of the DHHS pandemic influenza tabletop, but are of no less importance to public health departments and every other stakeholder agency and organization. Specifically, it discusses the role of exercises in emergency management planning, provides an overview of the present pandemic influenza threat, outlines special planning considerations and assumptions relevant to this threat, and reviews the foundations of existing pandemic influenza planning and response materials. It will also ultimately offer an adapted version of Tabletop Exercises for Pandemic Influenza Preparedness in Local Public Health Agencies that addresses the problematic planning areas specifically for public safety and emergency management professionals and should facilitate pandemic-related problem solving for all public and private organizations in the absence of a precisely tailored industry-specific exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the previous attempts at improving the competency levels of first responders, problems with these approaches, and a suggested new approach that focuses on establishing a national emergency response competency system. The analysis focuses on how to derive an improved set of competencies that meet the needs of all stakeholders. It discusses the issue of how to create taxonomies for competencies and their aggregation into clusters, tasks, and roles. It explores the vital linkages between position classification, learning, and performance evaluation. It recommends an approach to performance indexing or scorecarding for ongoing management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Department of Homeland Security uses a particular kind of vulnerability approach to allocate many of its disaster preparedness resources but it should allocate a greater number of resources using a risk-based approach in order to reduce future disaster losses. A true risk-based strategy of resource allocation demands the development of a national risk assessment that is too expensive, wide-ranging, and technically complex for states and localities to develop on their own. A risk-based approach would allocate more money toward more frequent but less catastrophic or visible disasters that, over time, may cost more than low probability, high consequence disasters. This paper explores the virtues and vices of both vulnerability and risk-based planning approaches, examines recent efforts in the DHS to plan for catastrophes, and analyzes the challenges in developing a national risk assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The highly lethal attacks against land transportation targets in Madrid and London have sparked considerable amount of debate in Singapore about the terrorist threat to the local land transportation infrastructure. How real is this threat and what can be done to counter it? This is the central question addressed in this paper. While transportation targets in general have always been a terrorist favorite, in recent years there has been an increased emphasis on attacking soft transportation targets such as mass transit. There are several distinct reasons for this development, including the increasing difficulty of successfully striking other targets, the ease of producing large number of casualties, the panic-spreading universality of the city bus or metro car, economic impact on the afflicted state by crippling workforce mobility and deterring foreign investment and tourism, symbolic value, and an overall high probability of success and a low level of risk. Indeed, since 1991 more than 42 percent of terrorist strikes worldwide were directed specifically against land transportation, producing the highest casualty rates of any type of terrorist attack. With regards to the threat to Singapore's transit system, analysis of Jemaah Islamiya's ideology and targeting patterns reveals an increasing preference for soft, Western, mass-casualty targets in Southeast Asia. But while Singapore's commuter transportation system fully encompasses all of these adjectives, the recently weakened Jemaah Islamiya currently possesses only very limited capability to strike this type of target with significant results. Still, other adjacent threats exist including a possible attack by a home-grown terror cell, attempted suicides by deranged individuals, or the disruption of service via a wave of hoaxes by pranksters or terrorist group sympathizers. Despite the relatively low level of threat, Singapore has made many preparations and preventive measures that other countries that have experienced surface transportation terrorism have identified as pillars of effective public transportation security. These essentially include prevention, effective response and timely mitigation, and psychological defence measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a practical approach to the problem of estimating the size and location of the population likely to be affected in a natural or man-made (bioterrorist) disaster. It discusses the currently available sources of population data and details several methods for converting this data into geographic units appropriate for disaster preparedness and response. It also demonstrates how to estimate affected populations on-the-fly, in response to a disaster, and how to maintain updated data in preparation for future unplanned events. Examples implementing these methods are given, and their utility is compared in different situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following September 11, 2001, U.S. policymakers created programs to protect the maritime supply chain. This paper analyzes one program, the Container Security Initiative, which inspects high-risk U.S.-bound containers at foreign ports. Although covering a small proportion of all ports that ship imports to the United States, the CSI has expanded rapidly and as of early 2006 covered two-thirds of U.S. containerized imports. However, CSI coverage of imports from potential terrorism source countries was lower than the overall U.S. average. Security planners can strengthen container-related maritime security by focusing on dangerous source regions and likely terrorist shipping routes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the vantage point of homeland security planning, the most important asset available in combating terrorism is the human mind. Out-thinking evil at the strategic level requires; (1) the ability to formulate complex relational models, (2) an awareness and recognition of the critical level variables, (3) an understanding of their influence and interrelation, (4) a determination of the controllable and non-controllable aspects of each variable, (5) the implicational value of such factors as applied to potential terrorist scenarios, and (6) an assessment of the potential consequences of shifts in each variable's valuation to the overall model. This paper examines the importance of visualization to the strategic planning process and offers a unique method of incorporating multivariate-multidirectional modeling in support of such endeavors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper measures awareness and knowledge of the Homeland Security Threat Advisory System, as well as the performance of DHS using data from a state-wide study conducted in Arkansas in March/April 2004. Respondents had relatively low awareness and knowledge of the Advisory Threat System. Results support previous research on political knowledge and the knowledge gap hypothesis in that race and education were related to awareness and knowledge levels. White respondents with higher education levels were more likely to be aware and have higher knowledge levels about the Threat Advisory System than those with lower education levels and African-Americans. Just under a half of the respondents indicated that the Department of Homeland Security is doing a good or excellent job of preventing terrorist acts. This research demonstrates that more research needs to be conducted on the effectiveness of terrorist prevention and communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Homeland security" was a familiar term on Capital Hill before September 2001. Congressional documents show that the U.S. was referred to as "the homeland" as early as 1995, and the term "homeland security" was used extensively by 1998. After September 2001, however, the idea of homeland security (HLS) became a part of American thinking and behavior, and, arguably, an American ideology. Some of the implications of a HLS ideology are explored in this paper, using as a model Slavoj Zizek's "reconstruction of ideology." The analysis suggests that assertions associated with "homeland" and "security" have served as a basis for U.S. policy and action in a way that has obstructed the American imagination and excluded social and political alternatives that more closely reflect American aspirations. By redefining ideology as reflexive ideology, however, it may be possible to overcome these limitations and redefine the ways in which a belief system is developed and used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]