Excerpted from an address at USC on July 20 by Michael Chertoff, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

“As everyone knows, one of our nation’s greatest strengths is the quality of its research universities, and so it’s fitting that a number of them have helped us create special Homeland Security Centers of Excellence to serve our country in our post-9/11 world. I’m pleased that my department funds these centers across the nation, including our very first center, right here at USC – the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, or CREATE. I’m also pleased that this past spring, we gave this program an $11 million, three-year grant renewal.

“The CREATE program brings together some of the finest scholars and researchers in the fight against terrorism. Using some of the most advanced models and tools available, these remarkable people are helping us to assess the risks of terrorism, gauge its economic consequences, and propose and evaluate strategies for making us safer and more secure. It is precisely this type of cost-benefit, risk-management approach that is needed to help prevent the kind of catastrophic attack we sustained on 9/11.

“Let me remind you that it was Osama Bin Laden himself who spoke about the horrific 9/11 attack in cost/benefit terms. In a post on the Al-Jazeerah site in November of 2004, the same year that CREATE was launched, he claimed that while al-Qaida spent $500,000 on the 9/11 attacks, his organization inflicted more than $500 billion in economic damage. He concluded that every dollar of his terrorist group and I quote, “defeated a million dollars … besides a loss of a huge number of jobs.” Clearly we need programs like CREATE to help frustrate the plans of terrorists who want to destroy our economy and our way of life.

“I’m very pleased that CREATE is taking a leadership role in forging alliances with other Centers of Excellence and with other U.S. and foreign universities to tackle the complex problems that terrorism causes. CREATE’s focus on reducing risks and costs has already led to a host of valuable projects for our country. Let me cite a just a few examples:

• a major economic analysis coinciding with last year’s Bioterrorism Risk Assessment Report to the President, informing national policy of the costs and consequences of biological attacks and countermeasures;
• training for immigration and customs enforcement agents to assess the risks of people and goods coming across our borders;
• a cost/benefit analysis for installing measures to prevent shoulder-fired missile attacks on commercial aircraft;
• a cost analysis of closing the border to stop the spread of avian influenza;
• an analysis of the most cost-effective ways to reduce risks from attacks on California’s critical infrastructure;
• an assessment of the probability of successful terrorist attacks in a variety of scenarios;
• determining the way to minimize risk to firefighters through computer-simulated training for incident commanders; and
• an assessment of the economic consequences of closing the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles from a dirty bomb attack.”

For the full Chertoff speech, visit http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/speeches/sp_1184959845456.shtm

For more information on the USC CREATE Homeland Security Center, visit http://www.usc.edu/dept/create/