Events Calendar

CREATE Seminar w/ Blake Cignarella & Laura Martinez

Speaker: Blake Cignarella & Laura Martinez, CREATE Fellows

Talk Title: Presentation 1: American Airport Security: An Evaluation of the SPOT Program / Presentation 2: Two Years at CREATE: An Experience in Emergency Management and Community Preparedness

Series: CREATE Monthly Seminar Series

Abstract: PRESENTATION #1
Title: American Airport Security: An Evaluation of the SPOT Program

Abstract: Security initiatives allow people to travel and continue living their lives in the hazardous world in which we reside. Specifically, airports in the last decade have become intensely guarded against attacks and invaders that seek to do harm to the United States and its citizens since the attacks of 9/11.
Increase measures have been put in place to guard against terror through governmentally run aviation security programs, such as The Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program in airports. This program seeks to detect threatening behavior based on behavioral queues before passengers go through screening. Through this program passengers are visually inspected by a behavioral detection officer (BDO) to find threating behavior. Although successful in concept, in other countries such as Israel, SPOT has failed to prove to the U.S. Government Accountability Office it is effective in continuing to spend tax payer’s dollars. This study probes at the methodology of the SPOT program by finding the capacity of the process and its vulnerabilities.


PRESENTATION #2
Title: Two Years at CREATE: An Experience in Emergency Management and Community Preparedness

Abstract: Laura will discuss how she has spent her time at CREATE crafting a well-rounded experience focused on emergency management and community preparedness. Her talk will cover three separate topics. She will first discuss “Emergency Education: A Case for Compulsory Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Curricula in Los Angeles County Schools,” arguing that although children are among the most vulnerable to disasters and emergencies, they are arguably also an apt and readily reachable audience. She will highlight international and domestic examples that have proven that children can become agents of change within their families and communities and act as first responders in their own right. Ultimately, she builds the case for school-based emergency education, an ideal way to decrease the individual vulnerability of LA’s children while increasing the County’s resilience.
She will then discuss her second year as a Fellow working for the City of Los Angeles Emergency Management Department as an Emergency Management Intern. In her work with the City, Laura gained extensive project management experience in functional, hazard-specific, and disabilities, access and functional needs plan writing. She was also heavily involved in other aspects of local level emergency management, such as interdepartmental and community collaboration, grant management, budgeting, and emergency operations center activities.
Finally, she will describe her work on CREATE’s current project to enhance Disaster Survivor Assistance Teams’ faith-based outreach. She contributed Catholic-specific research, and job aids for Catholic interaction and general best practices.


Refreshments will be served.

Please RSVP to calicchi@usc.edu by May 6.

Biography: Presenter:
Blake Cignarella, a native of New Jersey, is a current University of Southern California graduate student and a fellow for the Homeland Security Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE). She will be graduating with her masters and will be continuing her studies as a candidate in the doctors of philosophy program in Industrial Systems Engineering in the fall. During her tenure at CREATE she has developed interest in root cause analysis and improvement on security processes. Her employment with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority allowed her to contribute towards system security for crime on the rail lines, as well as police response time’s improvement.
Blake graduated Magna Cum Laude and second in her class from Rutgers University, where she received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Industrial Systems Engineering. She is an active member of Tau Beta Pi, the National Engineering Honors Society. Diverse sectors of homeland security utilized Blake’s talents, and added to her expertise, prior to the fall 2013 when she joined CREATE. Blake’s team at the National Center for Secure and Resilient Maritime Commerce developed a Detection-Action-Resilience Strategy for Small Vessel Security in the Port of New York and New Jersey. She performed network modeling and parameter identification for Rutgers’ Command, Control and Interoperability Center through a grant from the Federal Emergency Management (FEMA); completing the statistical analysis and modeling for flood mitigation efforts which is currently under review for publishing.

Presenter:
Laura Martinez, originally from Sacramento, is a graduate student at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and a research fellow for the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE). In 2014, she will receive her Master of Public Administration degree and a certificate in homeland security and public policy. While at CREATE, Laura has focused on emergency management issues related to community preparedness, including K-12 education and faith based outreach. Her work with the City of Los Angeles Emergency Management Department has allowed her to broaden her emergency management background through grant management, plan writing, community and interdepartmental relations, GIS and project management. She hopes to continue working at the local level in the future, and is an active member of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California, the International City/County Management Association, and the International Association of Emergency Managers.
Laura graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Government and a minor in music from California State University, Sacramento, where she was also inducted into The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. Prior to coming to USC and CREATE in fall 2012, she served as a Capital Fellow under the Chief of Staff at the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, working on technology policy, special projects, and disaster response. She also worked for a nonpartisan non-profit in Washington, D.C., writing about both security and non-security related legislation to inform the California congressional delegation.


Host: CREATE at USC

Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 306

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Erin Pearson (Calicchio)