Application Background: Behavioral Impacts on Markets and Infrastructures

• Goal /Aspiration for Project:
• Answer fundamental questions such as:
• What are the potential post-incident behaviors?
• What are the underlying phenomena that drive people toward these post-incident behaviors?
• Operationalize the term “psychological consequence” to enable consequence measurement and definitions of behaviors that occur during large-scale incidents
• Develop a model to enable potential policies that minimize post-incident psychological consequences
• Approach/Methods/Models
• Approach:
• Define productive vs. unproductive behaviors to operationalize “psychological consequence;” this led to development of behavior “classes” that categorize behaviors into groups with similar underlying causal structures
• Develop datasets of incidents and behavioral reactions to incidents
• Understand causes of maladaptive behaviors to include in model development
• Model: general system dynamics model of fear-induced avoidance behaviors to generically explain avoidance
• Status, Accomplishments and Next Steps
• Status/Accomplishments:
• Operationalized “psychological consequences”
• Developed behavior classes from literature and historical examples
• Developed, completed and published generic model
• Next Steps:
• Validate model with application to real world examples
• Use Sandia’s Behavioral Influence Assessment methods and CASoS Opinion Dynamics to establish further model objectives, gain acceptance for theoretical bases
• Develop models for other behavioral classes
• Use current model as a basis for developing behavioral “early warning systems” based on data from social networks
• Develop a Maladaptive Behavior Progression Analysis System and collect data on behavioral changes stemming from national incident
• CASoS Goals: Other Potential Applications
• Conditions/controls that reinforce productive behaviors
• Characterize underlying psychological phenomenon in food disease/contamination events
• Acknowledgements
• Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security via the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC)