This study seeks to model the dynamic complexity of a community's behavioral response to a terrorist strike and to estimate the economic impacts of this response. Emergency response systems, information and communication channels, and social support organizations are likely to interact with the particular characteristics of a terrorist event to both amplify and mute these impacts. What factors are most important to adequately forecast the broader impacts of a disaster and most particularly a terrorist strike? How can risk perception be incorporated into an economic model that predicts regional or national impacts? How does resilience (the ability of a community to maintain function when shocked) affect predicted responses to catastrophic events? How do these factors change and interact over time, and what are the important mechanisms that drive such change, especially system feedbacks and delays? How do responses to risk differ across gender, age, ethnicity, and income? What perspectives does a community bring to a crisis that helps or hinders its ability to prepare, respond and recover? What policies can be implemented that may mitigate the broader and long-term impacts of such an event?
The investigators will develop statistical and economic models. Interviews with community leaders and first responders will provide input for assessing emergency response systems. Public response will be based on data gathered from a longitudinal survey using three scenarios (earthquake, bomb blast, anthrax release) that unfold over time consistent with crisis news reporting. An economy-wide model based on the behavior of individual businesses and consumers, informed by the risk perception surveys and analyses, will provide estimates of the direct and indirect impacts of risk amplification.
First responders, health care providers, local administrators, and educators stand to directly benefit from a better understanding of the effects of their policies and practices. Findings from this project should prove especially useful to Homeland Security Officials. Researchers in areas such as risk assessment, communications, community planning, epidemiology, and risk perception will find the system dynamics model useful as a simulation tool for their own investigations.
