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Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management Newsletter Website |
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October
2008
Volume
15
- Number 1 |
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Personal Perspective: Risk Perception and Its Impact on Terrorism Policies By Janusz Wasiolek A few years ago I had a chance to attend a
seminar with a
researcher from Argonne National Labs involved in agent-based modeling.
Although still in its relative infancy, the goal of his project was to
be able
to model human behavior on a large scale. See, what agent-based
modeling is, is
a computer simulation of a virtual world that holds numerous “agents,”
mini-programs that are designed to simulate the behavior of a
well-studied
entity such as a human, an animal, or a business. Each one of these
agents has
their own particular logic and tendencies, just like the entities they
represent. When introduced into the virtual world with other agents,
each agent
then begins to behave a certain, but particular way. Modeling the
behavior of
hundreds or thousands of these agents and the way they interact with
each other
can give us a good insight into how networks and societies function. When I asked him how he would model the
behavior of a
person, he smiled and said something along the lines of, “That’s the
$100,000
question.” We all know people are not always logical, but for the most
part,
they can rationalize their decisions. The best answer the researcher
could give
me was “People are, in large part, rational entities that have a skewed
perception of risk.” Of course, finding out how that perception was
skewed and
then modeling it was the difficult part. The more I began to think about what he
said, the more I
began to realize that he was right. Taking a step back, much of the
risk we
perceive as being much higher than it is in real life while ignoring
more
pressing matters is based on imperfect information or disproportionate
information exposure. When looking at terrorism and seeing the billions
of
dollars being spent annually on DHS and related programs, the first
question to
ask is, what are we trying to do and what is our goal? The follow-up
question
of course is, are we doing a good job trying to achieve our goal? We
know the
DHS’s mission is to prevent a terrorist attack. If again we take a step
back
though, the ultimate goal of DHS is to save lives and prevent property
damage. Are
we really getting our maximum bang for the buck though? The billions of dollars we spend on
terrorism are a product
of us living in a democratic society. We see reminders of 9/11 almost
every
day, from license plates and bumper stickers to TV shows and talking
heads. The
risk we perceive from terrorism is huge because it is something we are
reminded
of every day. Compare the risk from terrorism to well-documented risks
such as
drunk driving. According to MADD, about 15,000 people die every year
due to
drunk driving, far more than from terrorism and the |