Risk Analysis and Hazard Mitigation: Analysis of Terrorist Attack Scenarios

Terrorism is one of the most potent public risk and hazard in many jurisdictions. The advancement of technology has provided communities with high level strategies of analyzing and mitigating terrorist risks and hazards. Nonetheless, terrorists have also used the advanced technologies to perpetrate their criminal agendas. Therefore, a local government will need to come up with the means of analyzing terror risk and mitigating the hazard when a terrorist attack occurs. The concept of modern terrorism has presented the community, government authorities, and law enforcement agencies with a major challenge because most people will use various means of perpetrating the atrocity. On this note, modern terrorism has been identified as having three elements; ordinary, technological, and intelligent. The three terrorist elements need analysis for the triggering events, perpetration modes, damage, probability, and consequences. Succinctly, in order to ensure that the community has the ideal means of preventing the propagation of terrorist activities, they need to be educated about the major factors that could motivate somebody to become a terrorist. The local government should highlight some of the areas that are prone to terrorist attacks. Furthermore, the community should be informed of the likely characteristics of terrorists. Whereas most education program has focused on traditional and ordinary terrorism, the technological and intelligent terror activities have become a major concern for security agencies. The rationale for increased concern over contemporary terrorism is that it has the potential of disrupting critical functions of the society (Reznikov, Makhutov, & Akhmetkhanov, 2019). For example, a technological terror attack on a major infrastructure could lead to a situation where the country has its economic activities disrupted and result in increased poverty levels. Therefore, the concern about analysis and mitigating technology terrorism has been exacerbated by the fact that its propagation can result in many harmful and dangerous outcomes.

Emergency management practitioners have more difficulty in bring about positive behavioral changes in the public because of the complexities associated with educating the citizens about dangers posed by technological terrorism. On this note, most of the residents have the perception that most technological installations in the country are appropriately protected by the government and therefore do not pose any danger to the community. Concisely, people’s perception of risk and hazard is instrumental in how they interpret risk messages sent by the emergency educators. The idea that the government is responsible for the protection of technological installation means that most people have are not concerned about the possible attacks and their effects to the community (Reznikov et al., 2018). In contrast, there are members of the community who are likely to perceive a statistically low risk to be much higher, leading to the unnecessary panics within the community. Nonetheless, an emergency manager is responsible for ensuring that the education relayed to the community is essential in influencing positive behavior by highlight facts about various facts and statistics. Accordingly, the emergency practitioners will need to ascertain that the community is well informed about the technological terrorism hazard and their role in the prevention and mitigation of the damage, injuries, and fatalities incase an incidence occurs. Some of the positive behavioral change include increased vigilance by the members of the society to ensure that possible terror attacks are relayed to law enforcement. Moreover, multi-agency collaboration is essential in making certain that the community is safe from technology terrorism because it involves multiple stakeholders with varying levels of understanding the implications of an attack. Therefore, the education offered to the public should be designed in a manner that will enhance the prevention and mitigation of the risks and hazards. Involving the community is essential in fighting terrorism risks and hazards. The analysis should also indicate how the public should react in case a certain technological installation is used for terrorist purposes.

Reference 

Reznikov, D. O. Makhutov, N. A., & Akhmetkhanov, R. S. (2018). Analysis of terrorist attack scenarios and measures for countering terrorist threats. Probabilistic Modeling in System Engineering , 1-10.