The Reflecting Pool

Academics and practitioners see resilience as a critical driver of a community's success or failure in recovering or bouncing back from disasters. Jill Raycroft discusses her thesis, "Realizing Resilience: A Study of Definition, Indicators, and Operationalization," and provides insight into improving resilience by bridging how it is studied in theory and practiced in the field.

Today’s cyber risks to critical infrastructure and public services affect all levels of government. Eric Rosner (MA 1601/2) explores the current state of cybersecurity, examines what role each level of government should play, and finds that many of these entities lack the capabilities and workforce necessary to successfully defend against and respond to a significant cyber incident.

Criminals are often early adopters of new technology and artificial intelligence is no different. Kevin Peters (Masters 1705/6), Chief for the National Threat Evaluation and Reporting (NTER) Program in the Office of Intelligence & Analysis at DHS takes a close look at how transnational criminal organizations and cybercriminals may leverage developing AI technology to conduct more sophisticated criminal activities and evade detection. He uses a future-scenario methodology to identify how this technology can be used and what steps the homeland security enterprise should take to prepare.

Experts draw on years of experience to detect patterns and make predictions when facing novel situations. US Secret Service Assistant Special Agent In Charge James Huse (Masters 1601/2) investigates decision making, cognitive biases, and how expert performance compares to those of novices with the same information.

COVID19 has swept the globe in little more than 3 months. Health officials have enacted quarantine orders to reduce the disease’s spread but who enforces those orders? Lieutenant Don Lowenthal (Masters 1803/4) is the Infection Control Officer with the Philadelphia Police Department and a Registered Nurse at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. His research explores the efficacy of forced, self and hybrid quarantines and how local law enforcement and community stakeholders should move between these different approaches as the situation evolves.

Why does the click-through rate on threatening headlines far exceed those that are more benign? Calling something a threat through a provocative headline or soundbite initiates a biological reaction that almost compels a person to find out more, but why is that? Multnomah County, OR Chief Operating Officer Marissa Madrigal (Masters 1605/1606 aka 1611) explores how the process of securitization (declaring something is an external threat) initiates a neurobiological process that often causes people to adopt a ‘better safe than sorry’ posture when deciding what actions to take in response to the perceived threat. Her research found evidence that this behavior is having an impact on homeland security-related decisions by creating a bias toward compulsive precautionary behavior rather than clear-minded cognitive reassessment and that our predictable behavior can be used against us.

First responders prepare themselves physically for complex and chaotic situations but what about mental preparedness. Yonkers Fire Department Assistant Chief John Flynn (Masters 1501/ELP 1301) wanted to know if responders could optimize their crisis decision making through mindfulness training. He studied the predominant decision-making paradigms, frameworks, models and systems, alongside various mindfulness training programs and practices, to determine if mindfulness training would be a worthwhile means of enhancing first-responder crisis decision-making. John’s research found that mindfulness training may improve certain human factors, skills and abilities which correlate with enhanced first responder crisis decision-making, with a consequent significant improvement of outcomes during future emergencies and disasters.

The human-machine interface found in today’s complex machines introduces unprecedented opportunities for promise and peril. Jackie Lindsey (Masters 1601), currently the Cabinet Secretary at the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, studied several theories that try to explain this human-intelligent machine interface and predict how the future will look. Her research into the causal variables that led to the first vehicular auto-pilot fatality generated unique insights. Lindsey combined accident investigation findings with human-machine interface heuristics, cognitive psychology theories to evaluate the human-machine interface, and offers a counter-narrative called Brown’s Point that ensures the most benefit and safe way forward for humanity in this rapidly evolving environment.

How is it that fringe stories and counterfeit narratives get traction, enter mainstream media, and are accepted as fact? Intelligence expert Samantha Korta (Masters 1605/1606 aka 1611) studied information laundering to discover how propagandists take advantage of the interconnectedness of the Internet as well as online technologies such as computational propaganda, echo chambers, and advertising to cheat the internet ecosystem and rapidly spread influential but illegitimate content to undermine the credibility and authority of legitimate sources. These intentional and harmful falsehoods spread in the virtual world can influence public discourse and manifest physically inciting violence, creating division, eroding trust, facilitating foreign influence during democratic elections, and even contributing to the rise in deadly but preventable diseases.

Providing perfect security in an era of unbounded risk is impossible. In my interview with Jack Anderson (Masters 1401), we talk about caribou scapula divination among Canadian nomadic tribes, jazz standards, particle accelerators, black swan events and using photographs of concealed snipers to understand how the dangers homeland security agencies face are increasingly beyond their control. Jack’s research shows how the response to such unbounded risks presumes a greater degree of knowledge, uniformity, and control than is available and that national adaptability is more desirable than perfect knowledge when responding to the unknown.

Jessica Bress is the Director of Continuing Education for the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. Her thesis explores United States’ drug policy and finds it wholly unprepared for the burgeoning phenomena related to the convergence of drugs and technology. Using the process of future-casting, she explores how the confluence of globalization, hyper-connection, exponential growth and urbanization might converge to create chemical and wearable enhancements, further complicating the regulatory environment. Jessica recommends the US decriminalize illicit drug use, establish a national bioethics committee and create an office of the future to transform today’s health and behavioral healthcare system.

We live in a world where information is abundant. But in our search for truth we must be careful. Without carefully curating the quality and rigor of information we receive, its likely that we're only consuming information that appeals to our preconceived worldview, our social identity, or our subconscious biases. Gregg Favre is the Deputy Director and Chief of Operations for the Missouri Department of Public Safety. In this podcast he discusses his research on anti-intellectualism, denialism and apathy and their potential effects on the construction and execution of homeland security policy. Using three examples from current headlines, Gregg shows the manifestation of this current problem. His findings indicate that anti-intellectualism impacts the highest levels of the political, media, and security processes and, as such, requires practitioners to acknowledge and address its influence. Finally, he argues that widespread ignorance of objective reality poses a threat to the democratic process and that, in the intricate and dynamic matters of our nation’s security, there is an ethical imperative for “reason” and factual discussion to rule the policy process.

Reports of police use of excessive force appear weekly in the media and have generated outrage in many communities. Officers actions are currently judged by the Graham v Connor ‘standard of reasonableness’, but the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) does not believe that goes far enough and recommend policy changes. Tracy Avelar (CHDS Master's cohort 1505/1506) is a Captainwith the Foster City CA Police Department. Her research focused on evaluating whether adopting PERF’s recommended standards would make a difference in practice and in public perception. This question is again coming to light with legislation being introduced in California to change the standard from ‘reasonable’ to ‘necessary’. The interview also includes reflections on my own actions when put in use of force scenarios.

David Flamm (CHDS Master's cohort 1401/2) discusses the inefficiencies, conflicts, and misinterpretations that are created by emergency responders who rely on different approaches to incident management. He draws on practitioner interviews and an extensive literature review to demonstrate how the responses to Deepwater Horizon, Hurricane Sandy, Boston Marathon Bombing and US Ebola might have been different if responders took a more comprehensive and unified approach as described in his model.

In this podcast, David Riedman, Captain of the Montgomery County MD Fire and Rescue Service (cohort 1401/1402), speaks about how the critical infrastructure club in the United States needs to be a little more exclusive. Born in the wake of post-9/11 frenzy, the DHS critical infrastructure protection program was designed to protect facilities “considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.” Based on a meta-analysis of government policies, the current critical infrastructure protection efforts may be misdirected even though it is the cornerstone mission of the department to prevent terrorism and enhance security. These findings can justify reducing the scope of the current mission by assuming a greater level of resilience within complex systems and adopting a risk-based methodology for evaluating only the infrastructure that would cause debilitating impacts on the safety and security of the nation.

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) guide emergency responders in a crisis, providing predetermined steps to manage anticipated events. However, modern disasters often manifest as complex systems and produce unanticipated outcomes. As a consequence, the application of prediction-dependent SOPs to prediction-defiant scenarios yields ineffective emergency management. In this podcast, Shawn Harwood (cohort 1505), Assistant Attache / Supervisory Special Agent for Homeland Security Investigations (DHS/ICE) proposes two practical, executable means of integrating adaptability into SOP-driven crisis response: the use of prompts and crisis co-pilots. Both of which help an emergency responder identify divergence from predicted behavior and encourage adaptation in the field.

For most homeland security agencies, success is measured by preventing events. However, when it comes to budgets it can be hard to quantify what didn’t happen and make the case for continued funding. For Sacramento Fire Captain Eric Saylors (cohort 1403/1404), his department’s performance was measured in terms of tangible loss reduction, but the metric was flawed because it ignored the unmeasured performance of a fire department that saved nearby at-risk properties and businesses. So he proposed a new measurement of success: the saved ratio. This new metric quantifies damages and business losses that were prevented thanks to the suppression actions of an effective fire department and includes that as part of the department’s value.

Michelle Mallek (CHDS cohort 1401) is legal counsel at FEMA and decided to study ‘Sovereigns‘ because much of the terrorist discussion in mainstream media is focused on external threats. In this episode of the Reflecting Pool podcast, Bijan and Michelle discuss how recent events have exposed the very real domestic challenges we face from individuals that actively espouse their anti-government views and use a wide range of tactics to confront law enforcement and government representatives.

Lisa Palmieri (CHDS cohort 1402) is part of DHS working in intelligence and analysis. In this episode of the Reflecting Pool podcast, Bijan and Lisa discuss how Violent Salafi Jihadism (VSJ) motivated the September 11 hijackers, but it is poorly understood by homeland security practitioners because of the muddled definitions that abound in the homeland security discourse. She talks about the importance of using precise language to define this threat in order to achieve a common understanding of the VSJ movement and develop a unified national strategy is warranted.

In this inaugural Reflecting Pool podcast, host Bijan Karimi talks to USCG Lt. Chris Kimrey (CHDS Master’s cohort 1402) about how emerging problems often surprise lawmakers and agency officials which can result in rapid, reactive governance. Chris talks about re-purposing physics equations to quantify the primary characteristics that influence the emergence of attention pertaining to a crisis and how he developed a repeatable model whereby an emerging crisis can be evaluated by its characteristics to predict the likely reaction of government.