Tutorial: Parallel Computing of Simulation Models for Risk Analysis

Simulation models are widely used in risk analysis to study the effects of uncertainties on outcomes of interest in complex problems. Often, these models are computationally complex and time consuming to run. This latter point may be at odds with time‐sensitive evaluations or may limit the number of parameters that are considered. In this article, we give an introductory tutorial focused on parallelizing simulation code to better leverage modern computing hardware, enabling risk analysts to better utilize simulation‐based methods for quantifying uncertainty in practice. This article is aimed primarily at risk analysts who use simulation methods but do not yet utilize parallelization to decrease the computational burden of these models. The discussion is focused on conceptual aspects of embarrassingly parallel computer code and software considerations. Two complementary examples are shown using the languages MATLAB and R. A brief discussion of hardware considerations is located in the Appendix.     

Risk and the Five Hard Problems of Cybersecurity

This perspectives article addresses risk in cyber defense and identifies opportunities to incorporate risk analysis principles into the cybersecurity field. The Science of Security (SoS) initiative at the National Security Agency seeks to further and promote interdisciplinary research in cybersecurity. SoS organizes its research into the Five Hard Problems (5HP): (1) scalability and composability; (2) policy‐governed secure collaboration; (3) security‐metrics–driven evaluation, design, development, and deployment; (4) resilient architectures; and (5) understanding and accounting for human behavior. However, a vast majority of the research sponsored by SoS does not consider risk and when it does so, only implicitly. Therefore, we identify opportunities for risk analysis in each hard problem and propose approaches to address these objectives. Such collaborations between risk and cybersecurity researchers will enable growth and insight in both fields, as risk analysts may apply existing methodology in a new realm, while the cybersecurity community benefits from accepted practices for describing, quantifying, working with, and mitigating risk.     

A New Perspective on Violent Crime Burden Index: Evidence from Indian Districts

Given limited resource availability in a developing nation like India, faced with high incidences of crime, it is important to optimize on the resources spent in combating crime by channelling them to proper direction. This requires an understanding of the actual and overall level of crime across India. Our paper provides a complete understanding of the various indicators of violent crime and the determinants of these crimes in India using district level data for three census years, namely, 1981, 1991 and 2001. We construct three alternative crime-burden indices. Including a variable like voter turnout in state election at the district level, we document significant impact of public awareness to reduce and combat crime. The constructed crime burden index shows that states located in northern parts of India have more incidences of crime compared to states in the south. We also find that our estimated crime-burden indices tend to report in general a higher level of crime-burden than the average based index. This suggests controlling for the factors beyond population while constructing the aggregate crime-burden index for any country is essential. Our work although is limited to the Indian data, we however, believe that this can be easily applied to various other countries.     

Bringing planning systems to the manager

This article reports the results of a corporate planning survey involving 15 U.K. companies and an experimental pilot planning system developed as a research tool to investigate aspects of interactive planning. The preliminary findings indicate that such systems can be of considerable benefit to managers, planners, and the organization, and that the design of the system from the users point of view will determine whether or not it will be accepted as a decision making aid. Some of the essential features are then described.     

A Controlled Evaluation of Psychoeducation Workshops for Relatives of State Hospital Patients

Pre-discharge psychoeducation workshops for relatives of psychiatric inpatients, conducted with and without the patient present, were compared to hospital-tour and no-contact control groups. Despite highly positive evaluations of the workshops, there were no group differences in patient relapse or family involvement in treatment after discharge; nor did the groups differ on questionnaire measures of relatives' illness attributions or criticism/rejection of the patient taken immediately after the workshops. Process analyses indicated that relatives made fewer personal and topic-relevant comments over time in workshops with patients present, compared to those patients absent. Patients, however, maintained high (often disruptive) levels of participation.     

Children in Foster Care: Possible factors affecting permanency planning

This is a study of Children in Foster Care to determine possible factors affecting permanency planning. Several issues were determined to be of importance, cultural diversity, economics, and family support services. Areas needing additional study were determined to be the different treatment given to African-American and poor children, and the influence of economic and social problems on placement needs and planning.