User:Ianpcox/Site Profiler

Background

Site Profiler is a software system that was fielded to all U.S. military installations around the world in May of 2001. The software provided site commanders with tools to help to assess terrorist risks, to manage those risks, and to develop standardized antiterrorism plans. The system worked by combining different data sources to draw inferences about the risk of terrorism, using a mathematical technique called Bayesian inference. Prior to the system's deployment, its developers carried out a number of simulation tests, which they referred to in a paper they wrote the year before. .

Description

Site Profiler was licensed by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1999 to develop an enterprise-wide antiterrorism risk management system called the Joint Vulnerability Assessment Tool (JVAT). The JVAT program was started in response to the bombing of U.S. Air Force servicemen in Khobar Towers, Saudi Arabia, in June 1996, in which nineteen American servicemen and one Saudi were killed and 372 of many nationalities wounded, and the August 1998 bombings of United States embassies in the East African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, where a total of 257 people were killed and more than 4,000 wounded.

The investigations into those events revealed that the United States had inadequate methods for assessing terrorist risks and anticipating future terrorist events. Addressing that need was a major challenge. Since the intentions, methods, and capabilities of potential terrorists, and often even their identities, can almost never be forecast with certainty from the intelligence information available, much of the effort in countering the threat has to focus on identifying likely targets. Understanding the vulnerabilities of a potential target and knowing how to guard against attacks typically requires input from a variety of experts: physical security experts, engineers, scientists, and military planners. Although a limited number of experts may be able to understand and manage one or two given risks, no human can manage all of the components of hundreds of risks simultaneously. The solution is to use mathematical methods implemented on computers.

Site Profiler is just one of many systems that allow users to estimate — with some degree of precision—and manage a large risk portfolio by using Bayesian inference (implemented in the form of a Bayesian network, which we describe below) to combine evidence from different data sources: analytic models, simulations, historical data, and user judgments.