Evaluation of security policies: common challenges

Safety and security policies address a long list of risks including (but not limited to): oOccupational safety and health oTransport safety oNatural risks (including seismic risk) oCybersecurity oPhysical security (including defence against terroristic attacks) The listed topics appear to be very far from each other, nevertheless they share some common features and issues: oThe issue of security and safety as a public good oThis market failure imposes to act with regulation, public investment and/or incentives (sticks and carrots); oThe role of individual awareness underlying the role of training and communication (sermons); oThe necessity to work on both sides of protection and resilience; oThe issue of multilevel (institutional level and regional level) governance, since risks may only be addressed properly in a systemic way but the implementation of policies/regulation needs to be adapted to specific conditions. Safety and security policies are very specialised topics in which the number of scholars is limited. In fact, the different nature of the risks and of the technologies aiming at their reduction impose a deep and differentiated knowledge of the specific context. Nevertheless methodological cross-sectoral insights are frequent, not only for the above economic aspects, but because they share some challenges, such as: oThe problem of performance metrics 1. Security is a multifaced phenomenom. It is difficult to identify a single variable to represent it, while composite indicators are difficult to measure and have the problem of weighting; oThe problem of performance metrics 2. The difficulty to identify indicators that address outcomes of the policy and that are sensitive; oThe fact that the outcome of any policy is connected to risk, which il probabilistic variable (a reduction in the probability to suffer consequences of an aleatory event, such as an accident or a cyberattack); oThe difficulty to detangle the causal link between the policy/regulation and the desired outcome oSince most policies are in the form of overall regulation, the lack of a proper counterfactual hampers the possibility of impact evaluation In our presentation we will discuss in deep the issues above as a presentation and a guide for the speakers of the session.