Newswise — Stephen C. Hora, a prominent decision analyst, is the new director of USC's National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE), the nation's first Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Research Center of Excellence.
Established in 2004 and renewed by the DHS in 2007, CREATE is the nation's first university-based Center of Excellence, supporting research in response to the threat of terrorism. A model of inter-disciplinary collaboration - thus the engineering-planning and policy partnership - CREATE continues to break new ground in applying advanced risk, decision and economic analysis and modeling tools to evaluate the costs and consequences of terrorism.
Hora has led several CREATE studies and is an experienced academic leader who served as the University of Hawaii-Hilo's Interim Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs from 2005 to 2007. He is a Professor of Management Science and Statistics at UH-Hilo. Hora earned both his Doctor of Business Administration and his bachelor's degree from USC. Hora will hold a Research Professor appointment at USC's School of Policy, Planning, and Development, as well as at the Viterbi School's Epstein Department of Industrial Systems Engineering.
Decision analysts such as Hora use formal mathematical, probabilistic and behavioral tools to model and evaluate decision alternatives, such as deciding how best to protect civilian aviation from the threat of ground-launched portable weapons such as hand-held missile launches. Such decisions must be made in the presence of significant risks and uncertainties and entail the commitment of significant resources. Decision analysis provides a rigorous approach for making these tough decisions.
CREATE develops predictive models that gauge how and where terrorist events might occur, estimates the economic consequences of such attacks and identifies where the country's vulnerabilities reside. DHS selected USC as the site for CREATE from among 71 competing proposals.
A CREATE study helped the State of California strategically allocate infrastructure protection funds received from the Department of Homeland Security. Another study serves to guide the DHS analysts as they weigh the costs and benefits of devices that could protect commercial jets from shoulder-fired missiles. In addition, a CREATE-funded research team led by Professor Milind Tambe of the USC Department of Computer Science developed randomization software for vehicle checkpoints at airports with significant success.
To date, CREATE has generated 256 publications, and reports on a variety of homeland security topics including biological threats, border security and seaport vulnerabilities; as well as maintains an active conference schedule. CREATE's research team includes more than 45 faculty researchers and more than 40 research assistants from USC and other universities across the nation.
For more information on CREATE: http://create.usc.edu/
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