Warning intelligence and high consequence environments: a comparative assessment to integrate human factors to support warning analysis

ABSTRACT

In high-consequence environments, a common source of threat occurs because of the actions of a single individual or small group. Whether purposeful or unintentional, the impact of a few persons can disproportionately have global consequences. To mitigate these sub-state and individual-level threats, decision-makers must be provided with timely and tailored intelligence integrating behavioural characteristics into threat assessments to better categorise the threat’s nature. Using a comparative approach, this paper assesses the utility of behavioural assessment and screening as a critical component of warning intelligence to safeguard against threats at this level. Though originally used to assess the behaviour of states, warning intelligence offers insight into the continuous monitoring of human factor threats in high-consequence environments, including individual assessments and evaluations of dangerous workplace practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Threat management
• strategic warning
• workplace practices
• human factors
• targeted violence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For an in-depth discussion of how state-level decision-making and individual leaders can impact intelligence success and failure see Uri Bar-Joseph and Rose McDermott’s (2017) Intelligence Success and Failure: The Human Factor.

2 Along these lines a key player may include that of who General Charles C. Krulak (1999) identifies as the “Strategic Corporal” whereby the decisions and actions of a single seemingly-low level individual can have tactical, operational, and strategic level implications.

3 Examples of these include Hemorrhagic fever viruses such as Marburg, Ebola, and Lassa fever, or smallpox within the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia in the U.S. and at the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Russia.