Partnerships | PACER
About PACER
The Johns Hopkins-based Center of Excellence for the Study of Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response (PACER) was awarded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as one of five merit-awarded U.S. university-based Centers of Excellence in homeland security. The mission of PACER is to improve the nation’s preparedness and the ability to respond in the event of a high consequence natural or manmade disaster to alleviate the event’s effects by developing and disseminating best scientific practices. PACER studies deterrence, prevention, preparedness and response, including issues such as risk assessment, decision-making, infrastructure integrity, surge capacity and sensor networks, and in particular, the interactions of networks and the need to use models and simulations.
The Center for Transatlantic Relations leads the international policy work of PACER.
To learn more about PACER, click here.
Results
In 2007-2008, the Center for Transatlantic Relations undertook a study to better understand the intersections between homeland and international security and the implications of these connections for preparedness. The results are published in the volume Five Dimensions of Homeland and International Security, edited by Esther Brimmer. To access the book, click here. To order the book, click here.
In 2008-2009, the Center conducted projects on collaborative international networks in homeland security and on responses to unconventional crises and issues of "hypercomplexity." The Center's publication Unconventional Crises, Unconventional Responses: Reforming Leadership in the Age of Catastrophic Crises and Hypercomplexity by CTR Fellow Erwan Lagadec may be accessed here. A second volume, Leadership in Unconventional Crises: A Transatlantic and Cross-Sector Assessment was published in Fall 2009.
CTR has published a variety of material on the international dimension of homeland security, including the following (for more information visit our Publications page):
- Leadership in Unconventional Crises: A Transatlantic and Cross-Sector Assessment, by Erwan Lagadec (Washington, D.C.: Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2009).
- Five Dimensions of Homeland and International Security, Esther Brimmer, editor (Washington, D.C.: Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2008).
- Ideas for America's Future: Core Elements of a New National Security Strategy, by Jeffrey P. Bialos, with co-contributors Stuart L. Koehl, David M. Catarious, Suzanne E. Spaulding (Washington, D.C.: Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2008).
- Unconventional Crises, Unconventional Responses: Reforming Leadership in the Age of Catastrophic Crises and Hypercomplexity, by Erwan Lagadec (Washington, D.C.: Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2007).
- Role Reversal: Offers of Help from Other Countries in Response to Hurricane Katrina by Anne C. Richard (Washington, D.C.: Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2006).
- Transforming Homeland Security: U.S. and European Approaches, Esther Brimmer, editor (Washington, D.C.: Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2006).
- Transatlantic Homeland Security? Protecting Society in the Age of Catastrophic Terrorism, Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen and Daniel Hamilton, eds., (Routledge, 2006).
- Protecting the Homeland: European Approaches to Total Defense and Societal Security and their Implications for the United States, Daniel Hamilton, editor(Washington, D.C.: Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2006).
- Terrorism and International Relations, Daniel Hamilton, editor (Washington, D.C.: Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2006).
- Atlantic Storm, a ministerial bioterrorism exercise simulating an attack of a pathogenic agent on the nations of the transatlantic community. Click here for more.
- Fighting Terrorist Financing: Transatlantic Cooperation and International Institutions by Anne C. Richard (Washington, D.C.: Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2005).
