Institutional Resources and Expertise

In addition to drawing on the latest research on terrorist capabilities, experts in the RAND Center for Terrorism Risk Management Policy will draw from the most complete database of terrorism precedents available – the RAND Chronology of International Terrorism, a database of all international terrorist incidents in any country since 1968.

In addition, various experts affiliated with RAND on damage from biological, nuclear and chemical warfare will be consulted for realistic assessments of spread of exposure and duration of contamination from these types of attacks. RAND Health experts will offer assessments of public health infrastructure in the face of widespread exposure to health risks, and resulting loss of life.

The potential for long latency of health effects, and resulting complex and long-term litigation that could result under various scenarios, will also be considered. RAND Institute for Civil Justice researchers will evaluate the compensation and liability implications in the face of each of the various scenarios.

Center researchers will also use the exposure databases and probabilistic methods developed by RMS to assess the likelihood and consequences of various terrorist events. For more than a decade, RMS has developed probabilistic catastrophe models to assist insurers quantify and manage catastrophic risks such as natural disasters that, like terrorist attacks, can lead to losses in the billions of dollars in a single event. While both natural catastrophes and terrorist attacks have some similarities, RMS's terrorism models have been developed to consider the uniquely challenging nature of the terrorist peril.

In preparation for use in Center research, the RMS terrorism models have been peer-reviewed by two teams of RAND researchers. The first team consisted of RAND analysts with expertise in the modeling of the consequences of various weapons. The second team consisted of experts in terrorist motivation and capabilities and in the probabilistic and strategic modeling of terrorism. Both teams approved the RMS models, and endorsed the adaptation of the RMS model for use in policy research products in the Center.

One of the research approaches adopted will be the use of scenario modeling. We envision that scenarios of a broad range of realistic terrorist attacks will be developed and their implications for insurance, compensation and liability will be derived. The scenarios, which will reflect different approaches to government and private sector involvement, will be evaluated.

With the expectation that the evaluation will depend upon the probability of the scenario (or of various outcomes of the scenario), the scenarios will be embedded in a probabilistic approach that will permit cost-benefit analyses. The scenarios selected for the analyses will be carefully chosen by RAND terrorism experts to realistically represent terrorist motivations and capabilities, and also vulnerabilities of the United States.

In addition, the research will be firmly grounded in understanding of legal precedents and in the institutions of insurance markets and the courts. To facilitate this, we will establish research advisory boards and encourage the involvement from a broad range of stakeholder groups in the research.

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