February 16, 2007—A RAND Corp. report has identified 39 security measures that can substantially reduce the risk of terrorist attacks at enclosed shopping centers.
The report by RAND, a nonprofit research organization, 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, according to RAND .
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 report also finds that disaster preparedness plans and exercises that focus primarily on emergency response have limited effectiveness in reducing terrorism risk.
The report, “Reducing Terrorism Risk at Shopping Centers: An Analysis of Potential Security Options” is available online.
