State/local CIP risk analysis: First results and emerging trends in the data

Digital Sandbox, Inc. has conducted a number of scenario-based analyses of the risks facing individual states and urban areas from terrorist attack. This paper reports on the common features in the distributions of risk to critical infrastructure in the studied areas. In addition, three metrics (population, a population-and-density-based-index, and gross domestic product) are compared to the measured asset risk distributions at the county level. We find that none of these measures provides a good match to the measured asset risk distributions. We conclude that jurisdictions should strive to find ways to simplify the direct measurement of scenario-based asset risk, rather than relying on simple heuristics, when making risk-reduction investment decisions.