September 28, 2010 --- The University of Southern California (USC) announced today that its National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) has been awarded a new $15.3 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
CREATE, established in March 2004 at USC as the first DHS Center of Excellence, will continue to improve the nation's security by evaluating the risks, costs and consequences of terrorism, and by helping to guide cost-effective investments in homeland security.
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Stephen Hora
CREATE Director Stephen Hora, said: “The solid foundation our team has established here at CREATE presents an attractive investment for DHS. CREATE has made great advances in modeling and evaluating the risks, costs and consequences of terrorism. We will continue addressing real-world security issues in a concerted effort to make the nation safer.”
Some of the center’s contributions include:
• A strategy for making security patrols, searches and checkpoints less predictable, deployed by Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) since August 2007, by the Federal Air Marshals Service since October 2009, and currently under evaluation by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
• PortSec, a system designed to address security concerns while facilitating the flow of legitimate travel and trade, in use at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
• A model for an economy’s resilience after a disaster, which has been applied to the impacts of 9/11, the London subway bombings, and several potential earthquakes in Southern California.
• A software tool for policy-makers and risk analysts that allows more effective assessment of threats and evaluation of strategies for countering those threats.
• Research on behavioral responses to a terrorist attacks and how these translate into economic losses.
• A series of collaborative studies providing a definitive estimate of the economic impacts of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
• The development or adaptation of 26 new homeland security–related courses for college students.
• 333 edited volumes, journal articles, book chapters and reports.
Over the next five years, CREATE’s research program will focus on staying ahead of the adaptive terrorist attacker, exploring the public's perception of terrorism risk and its impact on the economic consequences of terrorism, and evaluating the effectiveness of homeland security risk management approaches toward all hazards.
To accomplish this, CREATE’s research team will expand to include over 20 research partners across the country, engaging over 30 faculty researchers and more than 40 research assistants from USC and other universities across the nation. The center will pursue a research program of more than 35 projects per year.
CREATE is also proud of its education program, which has sponsored 185 undergraduate and graduate students, developed many innovative courses and specialized degree and certificate programs, and conducted executive education programs for professionals and postdoctoral researchers.
CREATE is the first of a network of 12 DHS Centers of Excellence, interdisciplinary academic research centers based at universities across the country, each with its own research focus related to homeland security. CREATE was established to conduct multidisciplinary research and education in risk studies, economics, and operations research related to terrorism and all hazards.
Housed at USC, the center is affiliated with the Viterbi School of Engineering and the School of Policy, Planning and Development.
--Kelly Buccola
