RAND: Army Can Boost Mission Success by Better Managing Environmental Considerations

By better managing environmental issues during deployments, U.S. Army units can gain tactical and strategic advantages that will help in combat and post-conflict operations, and boost overall mission success, according to a recent RAND Corporation study.

The study finds that commanders have not usually given environmental concerns high priority during planning, despite the effect environmental conditions can have on troop health, safety and security, and the importance they have for the local population.

Researchers recommend that Army leaders give more weight to strategic, operational and tactical aspects of environmental considerations during planning and operations, and develop comprehensive standards and best practices to address environmental issues during contingencies, an announcement of the study says.

This is consistent with the Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine, which highlights the importance of environmental improvements (especially sewage, water and trash) to gain support of the local population.

U.S. experience in Iraq suggests that providing clean water, electricity, sewage and trash management can tip the balance between the local residents supporting the U.S. mission or the insurgency, according to the study. Public opinion surveys suggest that Iraqis care about these issues almost as much as security.

Environmental considerations encompass anything related to the environment that affects the planning and execution of military operations or is affected by those operations. They include (but are not limited to) clean water, sewage-related infrastructure, soldier health, compliance with environmental laws, sustainability, protection of historical and cultural sites, and management of agricultural and natural resources.

“Perhaps the most underappreciated aspect of environmental considerations is the role that they can play in achieving U.S. national objectives in counterinsurgency and stability operations,” says report co-author David Mosher, a researcher at RAND, a non-profit research organization.

In countries where environmental conditions and infrastructure are severely degraded, clean drinking water, effective sewage and trash systems, and viable farmland are crucial to local inhabitants. Providing these things can influence whether inhabitants support the local government and U.S. goals and objectives.

“Commanders and planners can take steps in the combat phase to preserve existing environmental infrastructure and resources that will be vital once combat has ended,” Mosher says. “Determining what to preserve will demand that leaders and planners take a strategic view of the operation, including what the end result ought to be.”

The Army also can have a positive influence on the environment. In operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Balkans, U.S. soldiers have helped to build wells, sewage treatment plants and other water infrastructure systems, which were beneficial to both U.S. soldiers and local communities, said report co-author Beth Lachman.

In Iraq, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is helping to restore the Mesopotamian Marshlands that are significant to both regional and migratory bird species, and the local economy.

Environmental issues can also affect soldier health and safety, the costs of an operation, the logistical burden of supporting forces, and diplomatic relations. The study finds that long deployments and extended post-conflict operations like those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans expose U.S. forces to a variety of environmental problems. At one base camp in Afghanistan, legacy pollution problems caused short-term respiratory illnesses for U.S. soldiers until the problem was identified and addressed.

The relationship between the Army and the environment is a two-way street, according to the study. On the one hand, soldiers and operations affect the environment; on the other, the environment affects soldiers and operations, especially because many contingency operations are often conducted in locations that have significant legacy pollution and other environmental problems, according to study authors.

The study finds that base camps raise a host of environmental issues. In most contingencies over the last 20 years, U.S. forces have remained in theater much longer than expected. As a result, base camps that were hastily constructed for temporary use are occupied for many years and often have inadequate environmental systems and procedures, such as insufficient waste management.

Pollution from base camps can affect relations with locals, cause health problems for soldiers, and require costly cleanup efforts. The authors state that Army leaders should anticipate longer stays and design and build base camps accordingly, RAND says.

Operations that require less fuel, water and other resources, and produce less waste, will reduce the logistics burden. A well-designed, efficient base camp can reduce the resources required to sustain it and free logistics assets to support U.S. troops or reduce the number of convoys that must travel along dangerous roads, the report finds.

Environmental conditions can also extend beyond national borders because air and water pollution may travel great distances, affecting diplomatic relations with countries that could be crucial to the mission's success.

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Complexity of Financial Services Industry Makes It Difficult for Individual Investors to Distinguish Broker-Dealers and Investment Advisers

The financial services industry is complex and financial service professionals are becoming less distinguishable and more inter-related, according to a new RAND Corporation report.

The study found that while individual investors typically fail to distinguish the different duties and services provided by broker-dealers and investment advisers, investors are generally highly satisfied with their own financial service providers.

“Partly because of the diversity of business models and services, individual investors are not aware of the differences between broker-dealers and investment advisors,” says Angela Hung, the study's lead author and an economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “Nonetheless, investors are generally satisfied with their own financial service provider. This is primarily attributable to the personal attention they receive rather than from the financial returns they experience.”

Research shows that trends in the financial services industry over the past 15 years have blurred the boundaries between broker-dealers, which are regulated by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and investment advisers, which are subject to the Investment Adviser Act of 1940.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission attempted in recent years to clarify the boundaries between broker-dealers and investment advisers, but the regulation it developed was challenged and eventually overturned (Financial Planning Association v. Securities and Exchange Commission).

The SEC selected RAND to examine the current business practices of broker-dealers and investment advisers and explore individual investors' perceptions as to the differences between, and relationships among, the two.

“Broker-dealers and investment advisers have been subject to separate regulatory structures since the 1930s,” Hung says. “But in the past few decades the lines between the two have become increasingly blurred. The SEC can use the findings of this study to better evaluate the current legal and regulatory structure.”

The study includes an analysis of the business practices of thousands of investment advisers and broker-dealers based on information they report in regulatory filings. It also includes analysis of companies that offer both brokerage and advisory services or that are affiliated with companies that offer the complementary service.

To assess investor understanding, the study includes results from an extensive household survey of 654 experienced and inexperienced investors. RAND researchers also conducted six focus groups of experienced and inexperienced investors.

Researchers found that most companies serve as an investment adviser or as a broker-dealer without any affiliations with those that provide the complementary service. A number of other companies, however, were directly engaged in only one type of activity, but were affiliated with a company engaged in the other type. A minority were involved in both brokerage and advisory activities.

Smaller companies, which are much more numerous, tend to provide a more limited and focused range of either investment advisory or brokerage services, although they frequently report some sort of affiliation with companies providing the complementary service.

Hung says these affiliations further blur the boundaries among types of financial services.

“In many cases, we found it difficult to disentangle the services and business relationships of firms that were dually registered or affiliated with other firms,” she says. “So it isn't surprising that the typical investor finds it hard to understand the nature of the investment advisory or brokerage businesses.”

The study found that, in general, the roles of broker-dealers and investment advisers were confusing to most of the household survey respondents and focus-group participants. The survey respondents and focus-group participants indicated they have a general sense of the difference in services offered by brokers and by investment advisers, but that they are not clear about the differences in their specific legal obligations.

Moreover, the study found that survey respondents and focus group participants were unclear about the role of financial professionals who use generic titles, such as “financial advisor” and “financial consultant.”

Hung said that after receiving information detailing some key differences between investment advisers and broker-dealers, focus-group participants reported that the compensation structures, disclosure requirements and legal duties make investment advisers appealing. However, participants reported that the account minimums, industry certification and costs make broker-dealers appealing.

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Study Provides Framework for Passenger-Rail Systems to Cost-Effectively Protect Riders from Terrorist Attacks

A RAND Corp. study gives rail security planners and policymakers a framework to develop cost-effective plans to secure their rail systems from terrorist attacks.

More than 12 million Americans travel on passenger-rail lines each weekday, and because of its open nature, rail transit is considered an attractive terrorist target. While there have been no successful attacks on U.S. rail systems recently, attacks on passenger-rail systems around the world — such as the London Underground in 2005 — highlight the vulnerability of rail travel and the importance of rail security for passengers.

The study by RAND, a nonprofit research organization, uses a generic intracity rail system with characteristics similar to existing American systems. An interdisciplinary team of RAND researchers identified 17 security improvement options — such as canine teams, vehicle surveillance systems, and blast resistant containers — and assessed their relative effectiveness when deployed in different parts of the rail system.

“Millions ride the nation's railways every day, and it is critical to protect them from terrorist attacks. But we need ways to do so while getting the most for the money we invest,” says Jeremy Wilson, the study's lead author. “By design, rail systems are open and accessible by large numbers of people, and for this reason are difficult to secure.”

The framework RAND researchers developed gives transit officials a guide to help them evaluate their systems and determine the best, and most efficient, ways to improve safety. The study is based on a composite system in order to avoid disclosing confidential details about any specific rail system in the United States.

Brian Jackson, co-author of the report, says terrorists have demonstrated the ability to change strategies and tactics in response to security measures. As a result, passenger-rail officials and policy makers need to adapt in order to protect their riders.

“Rather than providing a static defense, security planners should review their plans regularly to ensure that they remain relevant to any changes in the terrorists' targeting methods,” Jackson says.

The study focuses on addressing vulnerabilities and limiting consequences, the two components of risk rail security measures can most influence. Additionally, researchers focused on intracity heavy rail systems—characterized by high speed and rapid acceleration cars, such as the Metro in Washington, D.C., MARTA in Atlanta and the Red Line in Los Angeles—and did not include light rail or commuter rail, such as Amtrak.

The study finds that 80 percent of the worldwide attacks on rail systems were bombings, followed by sabotage (6 percent) and armed attack (6 percent). Explosives accounted for 77 percent of the weapons used in rail system terrorist incidents, with 8 percent of the incidents involving hoaxes or threats.

Using the generic rail system as the intended target, researchers took data on past terrorist attacks on rail systems from the RAND-Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) Terrorist Incident Database to develop a risk assessment.

Researchers examined 11 potential attack locations in a rail system, such as underground infrastructure, ground-level stations, and elevated rail lines, and subjected them to eight different forms of attack, including bombings, incendiaries, and unconventional weapons.

The research was sponsored by an award from the National Institute of Justice, the research, development and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.

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Study Recommends Public-Private Partnership and Strategic Approach to Redeveloping New Orleans' Economy

New Orleans should craft a comprehensive economic redevelopment plan that combines public- and private-sector funding with a centralized structure, according to a study issued today by the RAND Corp.

Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent failures of levees in New Orleans in August 2005 devastated the city's economy in addition to destroying buildings and causing more than 1,800 deaths. Even before the storm, the city's population was declining and the economy was not robust, which complicated recovery efforts, according to the study.

The Horizon Initiative, a private-sector organization formed in 2006 to help New Orleans' economic recovery, asked the RAND Gulf States Policy Institute (RGSPI) to recommend the most effective organizational and strategic approaches to revitalizing the city's economy.

“This is a unique opportunity to not only repair the damage from the storms, but also address some pre-existing problems, in a comprehensive way, to forge a stronger, more vibrant economy for the city of New Orleans and the surrounding region,” says Kevin McCarthy, author of the report and a senior social scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

The study is not a detailed redevelopment plan, but provides recommendations for designing an effective organizational structure for those efforts.

RGSPI, a partnership between RAND and seven universities in the Gulf States region, examined 17 other cities' economic development efforts. The analysis showed that in many cases, economic development work was spread across a range of different agencies without a common development strategy, and in some cases, with competing messages. The most successful efforts incorporated three key elements: a comprehensive design, an appropriate organization, and an effective implementation plan.

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Patients with Depression Seeing Primary Care Physicians Frequently Don't Receive High Quality Care

Most patients with depression who are treated by primary care physicians do not receive care consistent with quality standards, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Physicians had high rates of adherence to just one-third of the 20 measures of quality that researchers examined and had low rates of adherence to nearly half of the treatment recommendations studied, according to the report in the Sept. 4 edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

“These findings are important for patients since most cases of depression are diagnosed and treated in primary care settings,” says senior author Dr. Lisa Rubenstein, the study's senior author, and a senior scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization, and a physician at the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. “This shows that additional efforts are needed to improve the treatment of depression.”

The study also found that patients who received better-quality care reported fewer symptoms of depression up to two years after the start of treatment. The findings are among the first linking quality guidelines for depression treatment with improved patient outcomes in community settings.

“These are initial findings, but they suggest that programs that encourage doctors to follow treatment guidelines can help improve the long-term outlook for people with depression,” says Rubenstein, who also is affiliated with the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Previous studies have shown that primary care providers do a poor job following guidelines for antidepressant use or psychotherapy. The RAND study is one of the first to assess primary care providers' adherence to a comprehensive set of treatment guidelines for depression.

Researchers from RAND Health examined the experiences of health care providers and patients who took part from 1996 to 1998 in the Quality Improvement for Depression collaboration, which was designed to encourage primary care providers to adopt comprehensive depression treatment guidelines developed by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The RAND study examined the experiences of 1,131 patients with depression who were treated in 45 primary care practices across 13 states. Study sites ranged from small private practices to large managed care organizations. About 10 percent of patients in the study were from Veterans Affairs practices.

Researchers examined whether physicians and other health providers followed 20 different measures of quality, as well as analyzing patients' reports about the status of their depression at 12, 18 and 24 months after starting treatment.

The study found that most primary care physicians did a good job of diagnosing and beginning treatment for depression, with guidelines aimed at these issues followed more than 70 percent of the time. These guidelines includes items such as talking to patients about depression and closely monitoring patients newly placed on antidepressant medication.

But researchers found that primary care clinicians did less well following up with treatment over time. Fewer than half of the patients in the study completed the minimal course of treatment for either antidepressant drugs or psychotherapy, and only slightly more than half the depressed patients who were not treated were monitored closely.

The lowest quality of care occurred among the patients who exhibited the most serious symptoms, including patients who showed evidence of suicide or substance abuse. For example, among patients who had a previous suicide attempt, just 35 percent were referred to a mental health specialist over the next six months.

“Primary care physicians were good at diagnosing depression, but they did not do as good a good job of managing the sickest patients,” Rubenstein says. “Right now, primary care physicians don't have the tools necessary to decide which patients to treat and which to refer on to specialized mental health care.”

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Playgrounds Could Unlock Key to Childhood Obesity, Study Says

A RAND Corporation study says school playgrounds and athletic facilities can be important tools in the fight against childhood obesity, but many are locked and in accessible to children on weekends – especially in poor and minority neighborhoods.

The study is a new analysis of data from a national research study called the Trial of Activity for Adolescent Girls. The data deals with the physical activity of 1,556 girls in the sixth grade in six metropolitan areas: Washington, D.C./Baltimore, Md.; Columbia, S.C.; Minneapolis, Minn.; New Orleans, La.; Tucson, Ariz.; and San Diego, Calif.

Researchers visited all the schools and parks within a half-mile radius of the homes of the girls on Saturdays in the spring of 2003 for the original study. The 407 schools represented 44 percent of potential neighborhood sites for physical activity.

Researchers found that, on average, 66 percent of the schools were unlocked on weekends. But only 57 percent of schools were both unlocked and had accessible facilities for weekend physical activities such as playgrounds, athletic fields, basketball courts and paved playing surfaces.

The percent of unlocked schools with accessible amenities varied across the communities in this way:

• New Orleans – 23 percent (before Hurricane Katrina)
• Tucson – 50 percent
• Washington/Baltimore – 54 percent
• San Diego – 74 percent
• Columbia – 77 percent
• Minneapolis – 93 percent

“Girls who lived near locked schools tended to be heavier, and neighborhoods with locked schools were disproportionately poor and had larger minority populations,” sayas Molly Scott, lead author of the study and research analyst with RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “These neighborhoods, where risk of obesity is high and public parks and playgrounds are often lacking, could benefit from convenient and safe places for physical activity. And making schools accessible doesn't require construction. It's a policy change.”

Although the RAND Health study didn't find a relationship between school accessibility and increased weekend physical activity rates, the number of locked schools was associated with significantly higher body mass index for the girls. Body mass index, or BMI, is a mathematical formula representing weight relative to height that can be used to determine whether a person is overweight or underweight.

The study found differences in BMI and physical activity by the girls' race and socioeconomic status, consistent with the findings of previous studies. Hispanic and African-American girls had 7.2 percent and 7.8 percent higher BMIs respectively than whites, and non-white girls recorded less physical activity than their white counterparts.

“Studies consistently find that people of different races have different BMIs, but the policy implications of that are often unclear,” Scott says. “This study identifies locked schools as great points of policy intervention where gains in the fight against obesity could potentially be made.”

More research is needed, Scott says, noting that the study did not measure whether the girls in the study actually used the school facilities for exercise. The fact that girls with higher BMIs tended to live in areas with locked schools also could signal that the girls live in a more stressful, high-crime area or a neighborhood with less access to stores that sell healthy food.

The study is titled “Weekend Schoolyard Accessibility, Physical Activity, and Obesity: The Trial of Activity in Adolescent Girls (TAAG) Study.” It will appear in the May issue of Preventive Medicine.


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Rand Panel Makes Recommendations To Respond To Pandemic

A panel of experts convened by the RAND Corporation has recommended actions that communities around the United States should take to be better prepared to deal with bioterrorist attacks, pandemic flu outbreak and other large-scale public health emergencies.

The recommendations announced by RAND, a nonprofit research organization, consist of 16 actions listed under three broad categories. They call for communities to:

• Have a coordinated rapid-response capability. This should include well-defined roles and responsibilities for officials and the public; a clear command structure; strong public communications; the ability to provide emergency health care to large numbers of people; and the ability to monitor the spread of a public health emergency.
• Develop and maintain adequate numbers of operations-ready public health workers and volunteers.
• Engage in a continuous process of testing, improvement and maintenance of systems for tracking and reporting information on readiness to decision-makers and the public.
  

“The panel's work provides a clear, new definition of public health emergency preparedness and describes the critical ingredients that constitute a prepared community,” says Christopher Nelson, lead author of the report that was produced by RAND Health's Center for Domestic and International Health Security. “This will not only help communities and government agencies figure out where the gaps are, but also where future investments should be made.”

The panel defined public health emergency preparedness as: “The capability of the public health and health care systems, communities and individuals to prevent, protect against, quickly respond to and recover from health emergencies, particularly those whose scale, timing or unpredictability threatens to overwhelm routine capabilities. Preparedness involves a coordinated and continuous process of planning and implementation that relies on measuring performance and taking corrective action."

The proposed RAND definition emphasizes that responsibility for public health preparedness lies not only with governmental agencies but also with active, engaged and mobilized community residents, businesses, and non-governmental organizations.

The definition also states that preparedness should build upon day-to-day public health systems and be regularly tested.

“If you ask public health and government officials, ‘What is a public health emergency?' no two people will give you the same answer,” says Nicole Lurie, MD, co-director of the RAND Center for Domestic and International Health Security. “Without a clear definition of what a public health emergency is and how to prepare for one, communities and states cannot assess whether or not they are prepared.”

“It's not enough to just have a plan for public health emergencies,” Nelson says. “Communities need to have tested all the elements to make sure these plans will work in a time of crisis.”

"The conceptualization and definition of public health preparedness proposed in this editorial is concise, clear and to the point," says Paul Jarris, MD, executive director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. "The authors provide a framework to guide the development of performance metrics and continuous improvement of our nation's public health readiness."

The report from the RAND Health panel, chaired by former Virginia governor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate James Gilmore III, appears online as an editorial in the Public Health Preparedness supplement to the April issue of the American Journal of Public Health. It is titled “Conceptualizing and Defining Public Health Emergency Preparedness.” The report was funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government has invested more than $5 billion to increase the country's ability to prepare for and respond to public health emergencies.

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Report Says Cold War Offers Lessons for Engaging With Muslim World

Just as it fought the spread of Communism during the Cold War, the United States must do more to develop and support networks of moderate Muslims who are too often silenced by violent radical Islamists, according to a RAND Corporation report.

“The struggle in much of the Muslim world today is a war of ideas,” says Angel Rabasa, a RAND senior policy analyst and the lead author of the report. “This is not a war of civilizations; it’s not Islam versus the West. It’s a struggle within Islam to define the character of Islam.”

“We cannot come in as outsiders, as a non-Muslim country, and discredit the radicals’ ideology,” Rabasa says. “Muslims have to do that themselves. What we can do is level the playing field by empowering the moderates.”

Rather than an afterthought, the building of moderate Muslim networks needs to become an explicit goal of U.S. government policy, with an international database of partners, a well-designed plan and “feedback loops” to keep it on track, according to the study.

The report by RAND, a nonprofit research organization, is intended to serve as a “road map” to build these networks and to serve as a practical guide for policymakers to implement.

Rabasa says the United States has a critical role to play in aiding moderate Muslims, and can learn much from the way it addressed the spread of Communism during the Cold War. The efforts of the United States and its allies to build free and democratic networks and institutions provided an organizational and ideological counter force to Communist groups seeking to come to power through political groups, labor unions, youth and student organizations and other groups.

Broad parallels stand out between the Cold War environment and the situation in the Muslim world today.

“At the beginning of the Cold War, the threat was a global Communist movement led by a nuclear-armed Soviet Union; today it is a global jihadist movement striking against the West with acts of mass-casualty terrorism,” the report notes. In both cases, policymakers recognized that the United States and its allies were engaged in an ideological conflict that had to be contested across diplomatic, economic, military and psychological dimensions.

But unlike the Cold War, this battle involves shadowy groups rather than a single entity. These radical Islamic groups control no territory, reject the norms of the international system and are not subject to normal means of deterrence. Many of these groups have been organizing for decades and have access to vast amounts of money, Rabasa says.

The radical groups are fighting to create religious states based on Shari’a, or Islamic law. They typically reject liberal Western values such as democracy, gender equality and the right of religious minorities to publicly practice their faith.

Many Muslim countries are ruled by authoritarian political structures and the mosque is one of the few places people can protest harsh political, economic and social conditions, the study says. Radical Islamists have seized the opportunity to promote their interpretation of Islam as a solution to those problems, aggressively spreading their views in the mass media and via the Internet.

“Moderates by definition are not aggressive,” Rabasa says. “These radicals are much more willing to go the extra mile and use violent means to enforce their views. Moderates are in the majority, but the radicals tend to intimidate the moderates by accusing them of being agents of the West or not true Muslims. Radicals have also threatened physical violence and have forced many people into silence, hiding or fleeing their countries.”

One of the challenges for the United States will be identifying genuine moderates from those who may appear to be moderate, but in fact advocate ideas that are inconsistent with democratic values, the report states.

Characterisics of moderate Muslims include: support for democracy, internationally recognized human rights including gender equality and freedom of worship; acceptance of nonsectarian sources of law; and opposition to terrorism.

Instead of focusing on the Middle East, where most of the radical Islamic thought originates and is firmly entrenched, the report recommends reaching out to activists, leaders and intellectuals in Turkey, Southeast Asia, Europe and other open societies. The goal of this outreach would be to reverse the flow of ideas and have more democratic ideas flow back to the less fertile ground for moderate network-building of the Middle East.

Partners in this network-building effort should be those who share key dimensions of democratic culture, the study says. The report recommends targeting five groups as potential building blocks for networks: liberal and secular Muslim academics and intellectuals; young moderate religious scholars; community activists; womens’groups engaged in gender equality campaigns; and moderate journalists and scholars.

As America learned during the Cold War, moderate groups can lose credibility – and therefore, effectiveness – if U.S. support is too obvious. Effective tactics that worked during the Cold War include having the groups led by credible individuals and having the United States maintain some distance from the organizations it supports.

“This was done by not micro-managing the groups, but by giving them enough autonomy,” Rabasa says. “As long as certain guidelines were met, they were free to pursue their own activities.”

To help start this initiative, the report recommends working toward an international conference modeled in the Cold War-era Congress of Cultural Freedom, and then developing a standing organization to combat radical Islamism.

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Study Says Greater Collaboration, Centralization Of Functions Needed To Support Arts

The arts sector in Philadelphia and other big cities would benefit greatly from a strong local agency to coordinate cultural activities and help make arts an integral part of each community, according to a RAND Corporation report.

The report recommended that civic leaders make cultural institutions a vital component of community economic development and neighborhood revitalization strategies.

In a study with broad national implications, RAND researchers studied systems of support for the arts in 11 metropolitan areas to identify strategies for sustaining Philadelphia's arts sector.

The report found that while the national nonprofit arts sector flourished in the last decade, the challenges of rising costs, shifting funding patterns, and a public increasingly skeptical of government growth or increased taxes necessitate new strategic approaches.

The metropolitan areas examined in the study were: Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Pittsburgh.

Researchers for RAND — a nonprofit research organization — created a unique systematic analysis to examine ways the 11 metropolitan areas support their nonprofit cultural institutions.
“Arts organizations across the country are competing more intensely for funding,” says study co-author Kevin McCarthy. “Furthermore, civic leaders are trying to provide stability to their arts programs while also dealing with other major urban problems, political turnover and declining budgets.”

To address these challenges, RAND researchers suggested that Philadelphia develop a centralized agency, either public or private, that would serve as the primary point of contact for artistic organizations and be integrated with other city government offices.

Alternatively, the city could have multiple public or private agencies with a clear division of labor serving the same function. Such agencies are found in cities with the strongest support for the arts, the report said, and provide a wide range of services to arts organizations including, but by no means limited to, funding.

“This report underscores that we all need to do our part to ensure the long-term viability of the sector, and establishing a strong central office of cultural affairs is a key step in any successful plan,” said Peggy Amsterdam, president of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, which joined the William Penn Foundation in sponsoring the RAND study.

Additionally, the study recommended greater collaboration within Philadelphia's arts sector on many areas, including programming, marketing, fundraising, employee benefits and some other operations. Collaboration could both strengthen the sector and save money, researchers found.

McCarthy and co-author Liz Ondaatje conclude that while arts organizations have typically undertaken fundraising on an individual basis, they could be better served by addressing the whole sector. The traditional approach of fundraising for individual organizations raises the transaction costs for both the organizations and the funders, the report found, and can put smaller establishments at a disadvantage.

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Report Shows Little Evidence Of Coherent Al Qaeda Strategy For U.S. Attack

There is little consistent evidence that al Qaeda has a specific strategic plan for attacking targets within the United States, according to a recent RAND Corporation report.

Although al Qaeda succeeded in attacking the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, subsequent terrorist strikes have been outside the United States and were carried out by groups affiliated with – but not necessarily directed by – al Qaeda's core leadership, RAND researchers found.

Even if al Qaeda still had the capability to attack within the United States, the terrorist organization has given few clues about the types of venues it would seek to target and why, the RAND study finds.

“It is entirely possible that the many anti-American pronouncements al Qaeda's leaders have made since 9/11 are merely expressions of their hatred toward the United States and that any future attacks might reflect little more than that hatred,” said lead study author Martin Libicki. “Such attacks could actually have little to do with achieving anything for al Qaeda.”

The RAND report examined four hypotheses that might explain al Qaeda's targeting preferences in the United States:

• The coercion hypothesis states that al Qaeda would use terrorist attacks to cause pain in an attempt to coerce the United States into leaving the Islamic world.
• The damage hypothesis contends that al Qaeda seeks to reduce the ability of the United States to interfere in the Islamic world, largely through assaults designed to cause severe economic disruption.
• The rally hypothesis presumes that al Qaeda would use terrorist attacks within the United States to mobilize supporters and polarize relationships between the United States and the Islamic world.
• The franchise hypothesis posits that although al Qaeda retains its influence and reputation, it lacks the resources necessary to carry out attacks and therefore would use affiliated groups to do so.
  

Researchers for RAND, a nonprofit research organization, found that al Qaeda may well find that its most attractive targets within the United States are those that can simultaneously create fear and damage the U.S. economy – reflecting both the coercion and damage hypotheses.

The RAND report also examined a range of potential attacks that would be consistent with the coercion and damage hypotheses. Researchers concluded that two types of attacks would make powerful contributions to such strategic goals: either targeting America's food chain or industry, or using “dirty bombs” involving radiological dispersal devices.

“Either of these kinds of attacks would have the potential to cause severe social dislocation and economic damage,” says the study co-author Peter Chalk. “If they came on the heels of a widespread or suicide bombing campaign they could also possibly overwhelm the country's emergency management infrastructure.”

In order to determine which of the four potential strike hypotheses al Qaeda was most likely to use, researchers analyzed major attacks by the terrorist organization and its affiliates over the last decade. They also examined statements made by the group, and consulted with al Qaeda experts along the way.

Ultimately, the report finds that most attacks had more than one goal. For example, the Sept. 11 attacks caused significant human and economic casualties while also serving to rally al Qaeda supporters.

Researchers also concluded that al Qaeda is most likely to pick a future target in the United States that would meet similar strategic goals. However, if the next attacks are carried out by local jihadists with little or no direct input from al Qaeda, the assaults will most likely reflect the “franchise” group's beliefs.

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Study: China's Attempts At Economic Coercion Have Limited Success

China has had only limited success in using economic pressure to win political concessions from Taiwan, although Taiwan's increasing ties with China leave it vulnerable to economic coercion, according to a recent RAND Corporation study.

China's limited success is not necessarily good for Taiwan or U.S. interests in the region, says Murray Scot Tanner, a RAND senior political scientist and author of the study, “Chinese Economic Coercion Against Taiwan: A Tricky Weapon to Use.”

“China has moved to a much more conciliatory and seductive policy toward Taiwan in the last 18 months or so,” Tanner says. “But if China comes to feel that economic and other non-violent levers aren't going to be effective, then it might use greater force in the future.”

The study by RAND, a nonprofit research organization, finds that China and Taiwan are currently in a state of “asymmetric interdependence.” For the past two decades, Taiwan has tried to balance two goals: avoiding excessive dependence on mainland China while trying to take advantage of China's booming economy to rescue Taiwan's own competitive position.
Both Taiwan's current president, Chen Shui-bian, and his predecessor, Lee Teng-hui, have struggled to limit Taiwan's dependency on China even in the face of exploding cross-strait economic ties.
“Although Taiwan is, overall, more economically dependent upon mainland China than China is on Taiwan, there are key regions and sectors of China's economy that are enormously dependent upon Taiwan investment — most notably China's information technology sector — and these would suffer very badly in the event of a serious cutoff of trade and investment,” the study notes.
Officially, the People's Republic of China (PRC) maintains that it is the legitimate government of all Chinese territories, including Taiwan, and believes that Taiwan and China will eventually be reunified.
Taiwan, however, officially considers itself the “Republic of China,” but for the most part operates as though it were a de facto independent state. Beijing fears ethnic Taiwanese will try to establish a legally independent Republic of Taiwan, and both presidents Lee and Chen have repeatedly asserted that Taiwan is a state separate from the PRC.
Beijing has repeatedly employed or threatened economic coercion to prevent any formal declarations of independence. Taiwan's economy is more vulnerable to some forms of economic pressure than others, including:

• Selective harassment or intimidation of Taiwanese businesspeople who are heavily invested in the mainland (called Taishang).
• Mainland sanctions against Taiwan's imports.
• Mainland sanctions against Taiwan's investments.
• Economic disruption, damage and sabotage of Taiwan's stock and financial markets or its information networks.

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In Case of Terrorist Attack At The Mall

A RAND Corporation report identifies and prioritizes 39 security measures that can substantially reduce the risk of terrorist attacks at enclosed shopping centers.

The study ranks the security measures based on the relative risks of a set of attack scenarios and on the cost and effectiveness of each measure. It identifies a high-priority set of six to 10 security measures that can cut terrorism risk to just one-fifteenth the level it would otherwise be, based on case studies of three enclosed shopping centers in the United States.

The highest priority measures identified by the RAND study span a range of approaches and include: public information campaigns encouraging people to report suspicious packages; placing vehicle barriers at pedestrian entrances to block suicide car bombers; searching kiosks for bombs and weapons; more clearly labeling exits so shoppers can quickly find their way out of malls in an emergency; and searching all bags and requiring everyone entering shopping centers to remove their coats to check for explosives and weapons.

Costs of implementing the highest priority security measures range from $500,000 to $2 million per year per at each of the three shopping centers examined. In addition, researchers found that implementing the high-priority measures would be 95 percent as effective as implementing all 39 measures.

“The RAND analysis does not assess the probability of terrorist attacks at shopping centers and does not suggest that the risk is high or increasing,” says Tom LaTourrette, lead researcher on the project.

Millions of people shop safely at shopping centers every day, but the threat of terrorist attacks at the centers has become a more prominent concern since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. There have been more than 60 terrorist attacks against shopping centers in 21 countries since 1998.

The report by RAND, a nonprofit research organization, uses a quantitative modeling approach to rank security measures with the goal of achieving the greatest risk reduction for the least cost.

The ranking approach considers the relative likelihoods and consequences of different types of terrorist attacks at commercial shopping centers based on historical data, identifies site-specific physical security measures that could reduce these risks, and uses a model to prioritize the measures according to estimates of cumulative risk reduction and cumulative annual cost.

Despite examining centers that span a wide range in size and layout, the prioritization of security measures among the three centers studied by RAND is very similar, with eight of the top 10 measures being the same for all centers.

The report also finds that disaster preparedness plans and exercises that focus primarily on emergency response have limited effectiveness in reducing terrorism risk. The vast majority of terrorism risk derives from bomb attacks, which have immediate effects that abate quickly. This poses constraints on what can be done to reduce consequences once such an attack has occurred.

While shopping center operators could choose to implement some of the security measures identified in this report immediately, many of the measures may not be feasible or appropriate under current conditions. As a result, a tiered implementation may be the best strategy, implementing a set of security options most appropriate for today's environment and developing plans today for further measures if the environment changes for the worse, Rand says.

The report also notes that the impact of the security measures on shopping center business will depend on how shoppers and merchants perceive the terrorism threat. Some shoppers may dislike increased security and come to more secure centers less frequently, while others shoppers may prefer to go to centers with increased security because they will feel safer.

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Anti-terror Defenses Must Adapt, Rand Report Says

When designing systems to protect people and places against terrorist attacks, government officials should take into account that terrorists actively seek and find ways around defensive measures deployed against them, according to a recent RAND Corporation study.

The report examines defensive technologies – the systems and approaches used to protect an area and people in it from terrorism – along with the methods terrorist groups have historically used to thwart attempts to discover and frustrate their efforts.

“The most important point we found is that terrorist organizations keep changing their strategies in order to remain effective, and we have to design our defense capabilties to adapt,” says lead study author Brian Jackson. “If we don't, we risk spending our resources building the equivalent of a fortress wall that won't actually provide much protection once terrorists have found a way over, under, through or around it.”

Defensive technologies examined in the report include: surveillance methods, techniques that counter terrorist weapon systems, blast walls and terrorist profiling.

RAND researchers note in the report that while America's defensive technologies can provide an edge in combatting terrorism, that edge can be dulled by the countertechnology efforts of terrorists.

Jackson and his colleagues at RAND, a nonprofit research organization, recommend that counterterrorism experts design multiple technologies to fight terrorism. Then when terrorists figure out how to defeat one defensive technology, there will always be another one waiting to be deployed.

“For most defensive technologies, terrorists will eventually develop countermeasures that will limit the value of the technologies,” Jackson says. “So it is imperative that we have other options available when that happens.”

The study also concludes that it is particularly important for those who design defensive technology to “red team” new systems, a process for anticipating what countermeasures the enemy will use and whether or not that strategy is likely to work.

“In a red team exercise, the good guys pretend to be the bad guys, to see if they can defeat the technolgies designed to defend against terrorism,” Jackson says. “When they uncover weak points in defenses, those weak points can often be closed.”

The goal of such a process is to assess the limits of a technology before it is built and deployed, thereby helping reduce the risk that limited resources will be spent to design and construct a defensive system that ultimately won't provide much protection.

For example, when countries examined in the study tried to use profiling techniques to identify members of certain terrorist organizations, the terrorist groups simply found people who did not fit the profile to carry out high-priority missions like suicide bombings. Government officials should anticipate such countermeasures by terrorists when crafting new defensive approaches.

Researchers examined terrorist conflicts and methods that included Palestinian terrorist groups, Southeast Asia's Jemaah Islamiyah, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, and the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

Understanding how terrorist groups have adapted to defenses deployed against them in the past allows government officials to design better and more robust measures for today's threats, according to the report.

RAND researchers found that when faced with a defensive technology threat, each of the terrorist groups studied responded by:

• Changing the way it carries out its activities or designs its operations so that the terrrorist organization may reduce the value of a defensive technology.
• Modifying its own technologies, acquiring new ones or substituting different measures for those already in place in order to limit the impact of a defensive technology on its activities.
• Avoiding the defensive technology by moving terrorist operations to a different area.
  Attacking the defensive technology in order to damage or destroy it.

Creators of defensive technologies used by governments need to be aware that those defenses could eventually be used against them, according to the RAND researchers. For example, detection systems could be used by terrorists to produce false alarms in order to trigger response systems and cause chaos.

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Lessons From Cold War Insurgencies Could Aid Efforts In Iraq, Afghanistan

Tactics used to battle Cold War-era insurgencies – such as offering amnesty to combatants and securing national borders – could help the United States as it confronts insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new RAND Corporation report.

While the insurgency in Iraq often is seen as too fragmented to be compared with past events, a review of five decades of RAND research on non-traditional warfare suggests that the current struggle in Iraq is similar in many ways to past insurgencies faced by the United States and other nations.

“The differences between past and current fights against insurgencies are overstated,” says Austin Long, author of the new RAND report. “Many insurgencies during the Cold War were fragmented, with rebel groups fighting each other as well as a central opposition force.”

Long says his review of five decades of counterinsurgency research by RAND suggests there are four lessons of particular relevance to today's ongoing battles: the proper organization of counterinsurgency efforts; the use of amnesty and reward programs; the control of national borders; and pacification of a nation's population.

Long, a doctoral candidate in securities studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reviewed dozens of past RAND studies about tactics used against insurgencies in such disparate places as Vietnam, Algiers and El Salvador in order to distill lessons for today's conflicts.

His efforts included working to declassify several reports so that their lessons could be incorporated into his report, which is titled On ‘Other War' – Lessons from Five Decades of RAND Counterinsurgency Research. RAND is a nonprofit research organization.

Long said that past experience shows that measuring progress against insurgents is difficult because the traditional military indicators such as movement of the front line or the number of enemy killed may be misleading. However, there are a number of best-practices in counterinsurgency operations that hold promise for the current efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Long concludes that the best organization to combat insurgencies appears to bring together political and military components into one decision-making group, which insures that the efforts of one does not undercut the progress of the other.

Some movement toward this model has occurred in both Iraq and Afghanistan with efforts called Provincial Reconstruction Teams, which include representatives from the military, the U.S. State Department, development experts and local officials. The teams work together to move forward the dual goals of improving security and developing government resources.

Long suggests these teams be expanded to create similar efforts at the regional and national levels, where they could coordinate overall efforts for counterinsurgency operations and development, as well as settling disagreements that occur at the local level.

“This type of organization helps wean military officials from thinking in terms of divisions and brigades when it comes to counterinsurgency efforts,” Long said.

Another strategy outlined in Other War involves extending amnesty to those involved in an insurgency, as well as offering rewards to people who turn in those who are involved in insurgent fighting.

Long argues that in Iraq amnesty should be offered even to insurgents who have been involved in killings, but only if the combatants agree to fully cooperate with the government and relocate away from insurgent-dominated areas.

Experiences in fighting insurgencies in places such as Malaya and Vietnam show that amnesty programs can encourage thousands of fighters to give up their arms by providing an alternative to the “fight to the finish” mindset that characterizes insurgent battles, according to the report.