Risk Evaluation for Identification and Intervention in Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) for International Biological R&D Activity
This report summarizes the work performed as part of a Laboratory Directed Research and Development project focused on evaluating and mitigating risk associated with biological dual use research of concern. The academic and scientific community has identified the funding stage as the appropriate place to intervene and mitigate risk, so the framework developed here uses a portfolio-level approach and balances biosafety and biosecurity risks, anticipated project benefits, and available mitigations to identify the best available investment strategies subject to cost constraints. The modeling toolkit was designed for decision analysis for dual use research of concern, but is flexible enough to support a wide variety of portfolio-level funding decisions where risk/benefit tradeoffs are involved. Two mathematical optimization models with two solution methods are included to accommodate stakeholders with varying levels of certainty about priorities between metrics. An example case study is presented.