Risk, Uncertainty and Everything Else

For those of you doing research into anything that requires a literature review, it pays to check out the types of work your Chinese research counterparts have published on in the Chinese academic literature.  There are two really good full-text databases out there for Chinese academic journals:

• Wanfang Data: According to the Wanfang data website, “as an affiliate of Chinese Ministry of Science & Technology, Wanfang Data has been the leading information provider in China since 1950s. With a wide range of database resources and value-added services, Wanfang Data has become a gateway to understand Chinese culture, medicine, business, science, etc.”  I personnally find this particular database to be very user friendly and English-language friendly.  The problem is that I don’t know of any scholarly institution with access.
• CNKI - This database is way more comprehensive in scope than Wanfang Data, but is less English-language friendly.  In order to navigate this website well, the user should become well acquainted with Babelfish, but be prepared to do a lot of copy-paste actions from the CNKI browser window to a separate Babelfish window.  Oh, and as it turns out, the Library of Congress has onsite access to this database and much (but not all) of its holdings.

In a literature review search of both Wanfang Data (trial access) and CNKI (at the Library of Congress) I completed in early 2007, I came across the following papers on risk analysis for terrorism and natural hazards published in Chinese journals (citations and abstracts provided, but pardon the grammatical errors as they are just translations).  Let me caveat this list by saying it is by no means guaranteed to be complete; rather, it is limited to hits obtained from those articles that were (a) searchable and available, (b) had english translations of the abstract stored in the database, and (c) retrievable using the small set of english search terms I used.

> Zhang, Z., Wu, Z. and Liu, M. (2004). “A Case Study on Mitigating the Risk of Terror Attack.” China Safety Science Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 95-97.

Terrorists usually take advantage of alternative forms of network structure to avoid being monitored and tracked by the security services, and to operate a terror attack by sudden swarm of cluster through immergence of passive supporters. Conventional counter-terrorist forces such as military and police will face a greater challenge in trying to suppress the terrorism with multi-originated feature. East Turkistan terrorist issue is taken as a case to simulate and analyze the evolution mechanism of a given regional terror attack threat, using physical concept of percolation. The feasibility to mitigate the risk of terror attack by non-destructive measures is theoretically analyzed.

> Fan, M. (2002). “The Risk Management in American Security Management System after “9.11″ Event and its Enlightenment to China.” Journal of the Shandong Public Security College, Vol. 14, No. 6, pp. 63-66.

After “911″ event, US government extensively and thoroughly tried to carry out risk management methods in security management system in order to block the security loophole and to prevent terrorism attack. After one year in practice, not only has the counter-terrorism object been achieved, but also obtains good social effects on safe production, crime prevention, and public security enhancement. This is an important enlightenment to our security management in relative areas. [WLM Comment: I must admit, I am intrigued by this abstract; if only I could read the full-text of the paper...]

> Wang, Z. and Liu, M. (2006). “Application of Quantitative Risk Assessment on Terrorist Attack.” China Public Security, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 18-22.

In this paper, the development of quantitative risk assessment is reviewed, and the way to quantify and assess the terrorism attack is purposed. In the quantitative assessment procedure, according to the information obtained, the summary of previous similar events, and the expert opinions, the data are quantitatively analyzed to obtain the most likely attack target, the threat characteristics, and attack circumstance. Fault tree and event tree are used to analyze the threat model and the system weakness, respectively, and then the attack consequence and the most weakness of the attack target can be obtained. A theoretical basis is provided for making effective decisions under terrorism threat, and a stadium is analyzed as an example.

> Wu, Z. and Zhang, Z. (2005). “Progress of Risk Assessment for Terror Attacks on Industrial Facilities.” Journal of Safety Science and Technology, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 3-7.

While the terrorism actions are getting rampant increasingly all over the world, the terror attack, as an important risk factor, should be studied thoroughly not only for academic profile but also for maintaining social security and stability. The terror attack is planned and issued by the terrorists themselves, and its hazard source - terrorist have their own self-determination. Logically predicting the risk of terror attack has become a new issue in the field of safety science. Both home and abroad progress on related researches were reviewed in detail. It is suggested that security vulnerability assessment and security management system be implemented on important industrial and public facilities.

> Yu, J. and Yang, H. (2004). “Characteristics of Modern Terrorism and Safeguard Strategy.” JOURNAL UNKNOWN, Vol. 6, pp. 11-14.

Modern terrorism has brought severe challenge for the globe. The international society hasn’t come to common for the terrorism law definition. Terrorism in the new period has a series of obvious characteristics. Through analyzing the characteristics, the importance of scientific evaluating on terrorism has been put forward and a series of relative protecting job strategy.

> Zhang, S., Tian, D. and Wu, J. (2006). “Simple Probabilistic Method for Relative Risk Evaluation of Nuclear Terrorism Events.” Nuclear Power Engineering, Vol. 27, No. 6, pp. 74-81.

Based upon event tree and probabilistic methods, a simple probabilistic method for risk evaluation of nuclear terrorism events is purposed in this paper. Four types of damage of a single nuclear terrorism event are analyzed. Since nuclear terrorism events have never happened, relative data of potential nuclear terrorism events are rare. Upon relevant potential events and hypothesis base, relative probabilities and relative risks of four modes causing nuclear terrorism events are deductively analyzed. The analysis results show that these four damage modes are, from severe to mild, using nuclear explosion equipment, using simple nuclear explosion equipment, attacking nuclear facilities, and using “dirty bomb.” According to the hypothetical premise, the probabilities of occurrence from high to low are using “dirty bomb,” attacking nuclear facilities, using simple nuclear explosion equipment, and using nuclear explosion equipment, and the risks of nuclear terrorism events caused by the four modes mentioned above are, from severe to mild, using “dirty bomb,” using simple nuclear explosion equipment, attacking nuclear facilities, and using nuclear explosion equipment.

> Zhao, G., Liu, M., Zhang, Q., Yang, Y. and Wang, L. (2006). “Terror Attack Risk Assessment of Subway Station Based on Game Theory.” Journal of Safety and Environment, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 47-50.

The present paper aims to introduce the authors’ analysis of the terrorist attack risks with the 22 stations of certain subway line and the model of the probability estimate of the target losses developed by the paper. As we know, once an attack was attempted, losses would occur with a probability of such and such, and so and so. Such probability of target loss can be worked out through the calculation of the change of the defended resources, which provide optimal allocation of the defended resources to the subway station under study and the structure of the counter-terrorism emergency plan. However, since the terrorist risks differ from the natural disasters for their particular nature of the ill intent of their instigators. As a consequence, game theory can be used as an important analytic tool. And in turn, such attacks on the subway stations can be regarded as zero-sum game between attacker and defender.

> Chen, W., Jiang, Q., Cao, Y. and Han, Z. (2005). “Risk Based Vulnerability Assessment in Complex Power Systems.” Power System Technology, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 12-17.

Based on probability theory the risk theory was applied to the vulnerability assessment of power system. Here, the power system was defined as a vulnerable system and a set of risk indices to assess the power system vulnerability and corresponding algorithm were built, thus the defects of traditional deterministic security assessment method, which cannot satosfy the requirement of electricity market and complicated power grid, could be overcome. On this bases, a risk theory and risk indices based power system vulnerability assessment software was developed. Taking the New England test system for example, the effectiveness and advanced property of the presented method were proved.

> Chen, Y., Liu, X. and Ren, F. (2002). “Disaster Risk Analysis of Transportation Infrastructure System.” Journal of Highway and Transportation Research and Development, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 79-82.

When natural disaster, atrocious weather or accident happens, transportation system may close down and result in travel cost increasing or some travel being called off. Depending on the structure of user cost and the traffic demanding and distribution model, the estimation method of the unit user cost is proposed in the paper. The sum of the user cost and the remedy cost constitute the disaster loss or consequence, which is the function of closing time, usability of other circuitious road and the remedy measure. Depending on the probability of disaster happening and according consequence, the disaster risk is assessed. In the meantime, several common anti-disaster measures are suggested, which can deduce the road closing probability or according loss. Depending on the cost-benefit analysis of different anti-disaster measures, the anti-disaster plan can be decided.

> Ren, L. (1999). “Advance in Risk Analysis for Natural Hazards.” Advances in Earth Science, Vol. 14, No. 3.

In this paper, the author first discusses the meaning of regional natural disaster’s risk and introduces the possibility risk in detail, pointing out that risk has different meaning in insurance business and disaster study. Then the author reviews the content of risk analysis of regional natural disasters and the mathematical models of risk assessment. The risk analysis is classified into three steps, risk recognition , risk estimation, and risk assessment and the mathematical models into three types, extreme risk model, probability risk model and possibility risk model. Nextly, the possibility risk model for analyzing regional disaster risk are reviewed thoroughly. Finally, the problems to be studied further for regional natural disasters risk analysis , the regional natural disaster mechanism , the method for recognizing regional natural disaster risk, and the method of regional vulnerability analysis, are proposed.

I hope this listing helps better communicate what some Chinese researchers are doing in this area of risk analysis for homeland security.  Note: If anyone is willing to help me translate these papers, send me an email/comment.  Also, if you know of any other Chinese papers on the subject, or perhaps papers on the subject from other non-Western countries, let me know.