K-12 Soft Target Risk Assessment
So What?
Soft targets like K–12 schools face growing physical, cyber, and natural hazards but often lack assessors, staff, and funds to manage risk.
Project Summary
This project develops a simple, all‑hazards risk assessment tool centered on a K–12 “risk engine” that can adapt to other venues (e.g., houses of worship, stadiums, malls). Ultimately, this should help resource‑constrained operators act on the highest‑value mitigations and strengthen resilience across the soft‑target landscape.
Purpose/Objectives
The team will build a minimum‑viable product with next‑gen chat‑based UI, craft and vet question items, and translate responses into weighted risk scores and tailored low/no‑cost recommendations.
Method
Usability testing, workshops, and iterative revisions will refine reports and training materials, with artificial intelligence (AI) used to enhance routing, analysis, and recommendations.
Outputs and Impact
Expected results include a validated, easy‑to‑use tool that prioritizes risks across threat, vulnerability, and consequence and points schools to recovery resources.
Research Team
Gina Ligon, Ph.D.- University of Nebraska at Omaha
- Director of NCITE
- Professor
- Expertise: Extremist organizations and leadership
- University of Nebraska at Omaha
- Professor
- Department of Psychology
- Head of Strategic Operations at NCITE
- Expertise: Organizational psychology, innovation, and malevolent creativity
Joel Elson, Ph.D.
- University of Nebraska at Omaha
- Assistant professor of Information Technology Innovation
- College of Information Science and Technology
- Head of Information Science & Technology Research Initiatives
- Expertise: Human-machine teaming, spatial computing, and terrorism