Mastering the Value Function of Security Measures (VALUESEC)

Led by J. Peter Burgess

Jan 2011 – Dec 2013

VALUESEC seeks to support transparent and robust decisions on security investment by combining a thorough analysis of societal dimensions of security measures with state-of-the-art models of decision-making and economic evaluation. A central task of the project is to define, weight and quantify attributes of costs and benefits, while paying attention to advantages and disadvantages of security measures. One of the VALUESEC’s challenges is the integration of economic (mostly quantitative) and societal effects (mostly qualitative) of security measures into one methodology framework - a “value function”.

The project first analyzes and describes trends in decision-making processes. It then generates a knowledge base of economic methods applied to security decision making and identifies potential for improvement. The overall aim of the project is to incorporate the designed methodological framework into a decision-making toolkit, which will be flexible, user friendly, and applicable to a large spectrum of possible decisions in the security domain. VALUESEC thus provides for the inclusion of stakeholders and runs several test cases, not least to bring the toolkit to practical use.

PRIO’s role in the project is to identify future threats and security measures, available methodologies for decision-making, as well as social, political and ethical tradeoffs of security measures.

Partner Institutions

  • Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten
  • Forschung e.V., Germany (Project Coordinator)
  • Valtion Teknillinen Tutkimuskeskus – Technical Research Center of Finland, Finland
  • CESS GmbH, Centre for European Security Strategies, Germany
  • Universitetet i Stavanger, SEROS – Centre for risk management and societal safety, Norway
  • ATOS Origin Sociedad Anonima, Spain
    EMAG – Institute of Innovative Technologies, Poland
  • White Cyber Knight Ltd., Israel
  • Policía Local de Valencia, Spain
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