Improving Behavioral Analysis in Assessing the Economic Consequences of CBRN Attacks
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Project Summary
The peripheral economic losses resulting from a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear attack can exceed the direct physical damage by two to three orders of magnitude. The decision-support tools DHS currently uses to estimate these consequences do not account for evacuation compliance, population flight, or the reactions of consumers and foreign trading partners. This project brings economics and psychology together to close that gap.
Purpose/Objectives
This project supplies FEMA’s National Preparedness Directorate, Technological Hazards Division, and Radiological Emergency Preparedness Program with empirically estimated behavioral parameters for evacuation compliance, trust in decontamination messaging, and response to incentives.
Method
The economics stream conducts literature synthesis, develops classification schemes matching stages of population mobility to stakeholder categories, formulates hypotheses, estimates microeconomic behavioral parameters, and runs computable general equilibrium simulations with sensitivity analysis across parameter bounds. The behavioral stream fields two survey experiments, one presenting a biological attack scenario and one a radiological or nuclear scenario. Results will be compared against existing surveys and research where available.
Research Team
Adam Rose, Ph.D.- University of Southern California
- Research Professor, Price School of Public Policy
- Expertise: energy and environmental economics, public policy, natural hazards and terrorism, regional science, applied general equilibrium modeling
- University of Southern California
- Associate Director, Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergencies (CREATE)
- Expertise: normative and descriptive models of human judgment and decision making, methodological issues in application of decision and probabilistic risk analysis