(= C EHC 461) Homeland Security Risk

Catalog description

This course examines the relatively new discipline of homeland security that emerged in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks. Due to its post-9/11 founding, homeland security is often mistakenly assumed to be focused solely on counterterrorism efforts. This could not be further from the truth. Homeland security - both the broad national homeland security enterprise and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - focus on many tasks associated with securing the United States, its populace, its infrastructure and its economy from various kinds of malicious actors, and from some catastrophic level natural hazards as well. Transnational criminal organizations, terrorists, cyber-attackers, human traffickers, and those that would damage or manipulate infrastructure like electrical grids and financial markets, are among the many threat actors that occupy homeland security professionals. Ultimately, the homeland security enterprise is about understanding and regulating the flows of goods, people, organizations, and even bits and bytes (like malicious computer code) into and out of the US homeland. This course addresses all these kinds of threats and hazards, and their potential impacts using the conception of homeland security risk. By taking their conception of risk deriving from Likelihood and Consequence (the class will break Likelihood up into the joint concepts of Threat and Vulnerability) and applying it to the many risks and challenges facing homeland security professionals, this course will encourage students to think about such professionals are managing, mitigating, accepting, transferring, and minimizing risks. Only one version may be taken for credit. Prerequisite(s): C EHC 101, CEMH 200, and CEMH 201, OR permission of instructor.