Managing the Risks of Terror and
Weapons of Mass Destruction

In the past, university-based scientific and technical security studies have typically been operated as a separate undertaking, distinct from most of a university’s other activities. While there continue to be many issues in arms control and security policy that are best treated in this way, increasingly issues of security are becoming seamlessly integrated with other aspects of civilian social and technical systems. Thus, it is important that engineers begin to consider issues of security and social vulnerability as they go about their work.

The objective of this program which is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is to begin to infuse such a concern into a variety of the research and educational activities of one of the world’s leading academic programs in the area of technology and public policy: the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) at Carnegie Mellon University. Because EPP operates with joint academic appointments with all five of the University’s traditional engineering departments, as well as with four social science units, this in turn will work to diffuse such interests more broadly across the engineering college and elsewhere in the University. While our objective is to effect a broad change across many of EPP’s domains of research, to assure that the first round of work has impact, it is important to start with a clear focus.

Two of the security concerns most likely to dominate the first few decades of the 21st century are the risks and vulnerabilities presented by the pernicious use by terrorists of the civilian infrastructures of industrialized countries, and the growth of terrorist groups in unstable regions such as South Asia. Faculty in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) have long had experience and deep expertise in addressing the technical, economic and policy dimensions of civil infrastructure, both in the U.S. and in South Asia. EPP’s security-related research consists of six studies, all of which are directed at the problem of managing, either directly or indirectly, the risks posed by weapons of terror and of mass destruction. These are:

1. Study of the dual-use application of biosensor technology for bioterrorism surveillance for the early detection of bioterror attacks in civilian populations that focuses on potential public health benefits and economies of scale that might be achieved if bioterror screening were combined with strategies to improve the delivery of public health services. (Elizabeth Casman, PI)
2. An integrated risk analysis of the problem of protecting mail systems from terror attacks. This will include an assessment of the risks of terror by mail, with and without various technical and procedural interventions in place, an analysis of the benefits and costs of alternative interventions, and a measurement of the degree of acceptance of various interventions by mail users. (Keith Florig, PI)
3. A project to develop systemic strategies to reduce social vulnerabilities to cyber attacks. While there has been a recent flurry of private and government activity to patch specific vulnerabilities, building and evolving highly secure systems requires a degree of foresight and a concern with collective vulnerability that is at odds with the free-wheeling entrepreneurial spirit that has driven much of the recent explosion in IT business and application. Working in cooperation with the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT, see www.cert.org) of Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute, this project will identify social policies and technical strategies that could reduce the risks and consequences of cyber attack. ( Benoit Morel, PI)
4. A project designed to develop policy recommendations for confidence building measures between India and Pakistan built upon shared IT resources, policies on the potential uses of IT and other resources to reduce inequities that lead to extremism in South Asia, and a study directed at understanding and improving educational policy. (V. S. Arunachalam and Rahul Tongia, Co-PIs)
5. A project to develop a cityscale multi-agent network model (BioWar) of weaponized chemical and biological attacks at the city level. Current system enables evaluation of syndromic surveillance approaches for early attack detection, evaluation of sensor-based early detection programs, and the evaluation of state and national bioterrorism response plans. In BioWar 62 diseases, inlcuding multiple weaponized diseases such as Anthrax and Smallpox have been modeled. (Kathleen Carley, PI)
6. DyNet - A computational tool for estimating the impact of various destabilization strategies (including both information warfare and individual isolation) on dynamic evolving convert networks under varying levels of information assurance (Kathleen Carley, PI).
7. Dynamic Network Analysis - Estimating the information content and robustness of statistical measures of network properties under varying levels of information assurance for static and dynamic networks. Both missing and fabricated information about personnel and the links among them are being examined. (Kathleen Carley, PI)
8. Efforts to supplement three Ph.D. theses in EPP, adding significant security/counter-terror dimensions to work already underway on:- The vulnerability of aircraft to electromagnetic interference from passenger carried electronic devices (the current work considers only benign devices but there is significant potential for intentional disruption of critical flight systems). (Ph.D. student Bill Strauss; Granger Morgan, committee chair)- An assessment of the potential costs and benefits of using distributed small-scale power generation and micro-grids as a strategy for making electric power systems substantially more robust in the face of terrorist attacks. (Ph.D. student Hisham Zerriffi, Alex Farrell and Hadi Dowlatabadi; co-committee chairs)- An assessment of regulatory environment needed to balance security-motivated demand for the wide-spread deployment of advanced bio-metric identification technology, with a variety of other social objectives, including privacy and social vulnerability. (Ph.D. student Elaine Newton; Granger Morgan, committee chair) Efforts to supplement three more Ph.D. theses on intelligence gathering and information assurance:- Impacts of information sharing and information assurance on performance of agencies faced with gaining information on a dynamic and deceptive group. (Ph.D. student Robert Behrman; Kathleen Carley, committee chair)- Utilization of Bayesian updating and machine learning techniques to estimate the shape of hidden networks among people. (Ph.D. student Matthew Dombroski; Paul Fischbeck and Kathleen Carley, co-committee chairs) - VISTA - a multi-agent tool that intelligence analysts can use to visualize the sudden, non-linear, emergent events, including attacks on the critical infrastructure, that can characterize asymetric threat operations in urban settings. (Ph.D. student Marcus Louie; Kathleen Carley, committee chair)

While all of these topics involve technical issues, they also involve important social and behavioral dimensions. One of the strengths of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy is that it combines faculty with deep technical expertise with outstanding faculty in behavioral social science. The above six activities will be undertaken in consultation with key social science faculty to assure that the assumptions and strategies adopted in these six studies are behaviorally realistic and based on the best modern social science.

Complementing the research outlined above are a number of outreach activities. All research activities will draw on EPP.s experience in public involvement and public communication to assure that the research is compatible with public sensibilities and that results are disseminated in a useful format. A seminar series on the security dimension of civilian technologies will raise awareness of these issues within the CMU campus community and provide an opportunity for program researchers to interact with invited speakers. Finally, new courses or course modules will be developed on security issues, some based on the program.s research, and others designed to supplement existing civil-system courses on telecommunications or energy systems. It is anticipated that this work will result in (or contribute to) the completion of eight Ph.D.s. EPP has an excellent track record of producing graduates who go on to have substantial national and international impacts in their chosen fields. In addition, the work will strengthen the security interests of approximately a dozen EPP faculty who currently address civil-sector problems that have substantial security implications.