This edited book captures salient global security challenges and presents 'design' solutions in dealing with wicked problems. Through case studies and applied research this book reveals the many perspectives, tools and approaches to support security design. Security design thereby can support risk and threat analysis, risk communication, problem framing and development of interventions strategies. From the refugee crisis to economic slowdowns in emerging markets, from ever-rising numbers of terrorist and cyberattacks to global water shortages, to the proliferation of the Internet of Things and its impact on the security of our homes, cities and critical infrastructure, the current security landscape is diverse and complex. These global risks have been in the headlines in the last year (Global Risks Report) and pose significant security challenges both nationally and globally. In fact, national security is no longer just national. Non-state actors, cyber NGO, rising powers, and hybrid wars and crimes in strategic areas pose complex challenges to global security. In the words of Horst Rittel (1968): "Design is an activity, which aims at the production of a plan, which plan -if implemented- is intended to bring about a situation with specific desired characteristics without creating unforeseen and undesired side and after effects."
About the Author: Dr. Anthony Masys is an Associate Professor and Director of Global Disaster Management, Humanitarian Assistance and Homeland Security at the University of South Florida. His research interests focus on safety and security, risk, crisis and disaster management, resilience, safety culture, scenario planning, human security, intelligence (alternative analysis), counter-terrorism, complex socio-technical system analysis, modeling and simulation, systems thinking, action research.
A former senior Air Force Officer, Dr. Masys has a BSc in Physics and MSc in Underwater Acoustics and Oceanography from the Royal Military College of Canada and a PhD from the University of Leicester. He is Editor in Chief for Springer Publishing book series: Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications and holds various advisory board positions with academic journals and books series.
Dr. Masys is an internationally recognized author, speaker and facilitator and has held workshops in Europe, Canada, South America, West Africa and Asia including at the UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction March 2015 in Sendai, Japan. He has published extensively in the domains of physics and the social sciences. His books include:
- Opening the Black Box of Human Error
- Networks and Network Analysis for Defence and Security. Springer Publishing
- Disaster Management- Enabling Resilience. Springer Publishing
Applications of Systems Thinking and Soft Operations Research for managing complexity. Springer Publishing- Exploring the Security Landscape- non-traditional security challenges. Springer Publishing.
- Disaster Forensics: understanding root cause and complexity causality. Springer Publishing
Dr. Masys supports the University of Leicester (UK) as an associate tutor in their Distance MSc Program on Risk Crisis and Disaster Management.
