Modeling Community Response and Impacts to a Terrorist Strike in a Large Urban Area
Prof. William J. Burns, CAL STATE SAN MARCOS
It’s a sad fact that public officials, health care providers, business owners, and citizens now feel the need to prepare for the impact a terrorist strike might have on an urban community. News coverage would be dramatic and its images graphic. Public concern would escalate as citizens seek to assess their threat level. Local authorities would scramble to intervene, and health care workers would prepare to render aid and answer questions. Public reaction and subsequent ripple effects would likely go far beyond any direct consequences of the event itself. Emergency response systems, information and communication channels, and social support organizations are likely to interact with the particular characteristics of a terrorist event in a nonlinear fashion to produce a wide range of physical, social, and economic impacts.
This presentation addressed questions such as:
1) What are the requisite factors to adequately forecast the impact of a terrorist strike?
2) What are the important causal mechanisms that contribute to these impacts?
3) What perspectives and policies does a community bring to such a crisis that helps or hinders its ability to prepare, respond, and recover?
Discussion involved the public’s perception of risk, a system dynamics simulation model, and proposed future research.
For more information on the presentation follow the link below:
