Well, what we can do is to decide to be smart about our limited resources. It is impossible to provide 100% protection, you see, we have to be right 100% of the times, they just have to be right once. As we have seen in the UK itself, we are currently knowing about 3000 possible plots, it is just a matter of time that one of them slips through like the last time it happened in London.
So what you do is to work on a risk based approach. Devote your limited resources to the places of highest risk and work your way downwards, because if you try to spread your force equally, then you will fail. It will be like putting an anti terrorist team in Exeter St. Davids. What's the point? Who will terrorists target there?
Here is a great study on this area. Some quotes:
The first application used the RMS model to compare terrorism risk across metropolitan areas that received funding from the UASI grant program in 2005. The fundamental conclusion of this analysis is that, according to the RMS model, terrorism risk is concentrated in a small number of those designated UASI cities, with most cities having negligible relative risk. For example, considering fatalities only, New York accounts for 65 percent of the national risk, with the next closest city, Chicago, having 12 percent. After Chicago, risk to other individual cities falls off steeply. The top eight cities account for more than 95 percent of the nation’s risk from terror attacks. Furthermore, the estimated proportion of terrorism risk in each urban area exceeded the share of population and the actual UASI allocation percentages in only three urban areas: New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. These results do not change significantly when considering property loss.
They answer questions like:
- How does the overall terrorism risk in Las Vegas compare to that in other cities?
- How do potential terrorist attack targets within Las Vegas rank in terms of overall risk and three constituent components of risk: threat, vulnerability, and consequence?
- How does the risk ranking change when examining particular attack modes or when considering available intelligence?
How to use this risk based approach to provide local law enforcement around the country with “actionable intelligence”: guidance about whom and what to look for, where, and when.
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