JSM 2011 Online Program

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Activity Details


CE_10C Sun, 7/31/2011, 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM HQ-Poinciana 3 & 4
Risk Analysis in National Security — Continuing Education Course
ASA , Section on Statistics in Defense and National Security
Instructor(s): David Banks, Duke University
National security problems pose special challenges for classical statistical risk analysis. First, there is the problem of accounting for adversarial decision-making: game theory does a poor job of describing human behavior, but standard probabilistic risk analysis is inadequate in modeling malicious strategizing. A second problem concerns the elicitation of expert judgment. In national security, the problems are astonishingly complex and there may not be any expert who has the full domain knowledge that is needed (on top of the usual difficulties of expert over-confidence, anchoring bias, and so forth). A third problem is the pervasive use of complex computer models (BTRA, HAZUS-MH) as risk managment tools, and the difficulty that arises in validating their outputs and attaching appropriate uncertainties to them. This shortcourse describes the current state of the statistical art in addressing these issues.



2011 JSM Online Program Home

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