In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, there is a growing sense of insecurity felt by many citizens around the world. Sustainable security, with roots in the sustainable development and human security literature, seeks positive transformations for the co-evolving and mutually dependent human-environmental condition by integrating (and subsuming) national, human, environmental, and energy security concerns and capitalizing on opportunities provided by human creativity, diplomatic openings, modernization and environmental change. The field of Sustainable Security Systems Engineering is proposed for protecting, restoring, designing, and implementing a set of integrated natural and man-made processes that equitably and responsibly meet the biophysical needs of human communities, while maintaining long-term security, respecting financial constraints, meeting ecological limits, and improving institutional arrangements for transparent and effective governance. Scenario planning is shown to help promote sustainable security by identifying the preconditions of instability and helping to proactively address them in an increasingly complex and uncertain world. The six papers published in this featured collection cross policy domains, geographic, political, and sectoral boundaries and were discussed at forums sponsored by the Systems Engineering and Global Policy group. Collectively, they demonstrate the quality, breadth and depth of systems engineering methodologies that are used to promote sustainable security.

We put forth Drama Theory II (DT II) as a formal multiple participant decision making framework that can be used to systematically model complex security challenges, and advance the field of Sustainable Security Systems Engineering. DT II is defined as a theory of “large world” pre-game communication and equilibrium selection. While game theoretic tools have been widely applied to resolve environmental conflicts and promote global security, traditional game theory assumes that decision makers, options, and preferences are fixed. A mathematical treatment of key drama theoretic concepts (i.e. positions, intentions, doubts and dilemmas) is provided. The dynamics of the drama theoretic process are discussed and the expected equilibrium set is derived. The fundamental theorem of drama theory is proven and all theoretical results are applied to promote sustainable security solutions. It is emphasized that DT II represents a flexible systems engineering technique to address time-sensitive, multi-faceted, and complex multiple participant negotiations.

The world post-9/11 is characterised by uncertainty, fear and suspicion. Psychological confrontations amplified by the mass media have even come to dominate physical engagements between warring parties. Drama theory provides a powerful framework for understanding these interactions in much the way that game theory was able to support strategy making by autonomous players in a less inter-connected era. A model of the ‘normal’ process leading to dramatic resolution is an essential feature of the drama theory approach and is described here. However this process can be derailed or fail in many ways. This paper reviews many of these systemic pathologies and illustrates some of them through consideration of three high-profile cases. The conclusion is that it is important to recognise and possibly to use pathological behavior as an element of a character’s interaction strategy.

While game theoretic tools have been widely applied to nuclear proliferation and disarmament issues, traditional decision analysis assumes that decision makers, options, and preferences are fixed. A drama theoretic approach is used to overcome these limiting assumptions: Drama Theory (DT) II allows global leaders and national security policy makers to engage in a rational-emotional process of re-defining international security negotiations (and their “positions” in them) until agreement on a satisfactory nuclear non-proliferation resolution is reached. The 2009 nuclear energy negotiations between Iran and world powers are modeled with DT II and the Confrontation ManagerTM Decision Support System. By adjusting strategy and deriving transformative security policy, it is shown how international security can be achieved by promoting nuclear non-proliferation and resolving strategic conflict.

The utilization of decision support systems which are flexible enough to handle information about cooperative behavior and stakeholder attitudes are useful for analyzing complex social conflicts. One such conflict which arose from the redevelopment of a private brownfield property in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada is examined using such a decision support tool. Specifically, a formal model referred to as COAT which allows for the examination of conflicts with both coalition and attitude properties is rigorously defined and then implemented within the framework of the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution in order that insights may be gained on how the decision makers can reach win-win resolutions.

An intelligent security systems engineering approach is used to analyze fire and explosive critical incidents, a growing concern in urban communities. A feed-forward back-propagation neural network models the damages arising from these critical incidents. The overall goal is to promote fire safety and sustainable security. The intelligent security systems engineering prediction model uses a fully connected multilayer neural network and considers a number of factors related to the fire or explosive incident including the type of property affected, the time of day, and the ignition source. The network was trained on a large number of critical incident records reported in Toronto, Canada between 2000 and 2006. Our intelligent security systems engineering approach can help emergency responders by improving critical incident analysis, sustainable security, and fire risk management.

A hybrid approach of DEA (data envelopment analysis) and TOPSIS (technique for order performance (preference) by similarity to ideal solution) is proposed for multiple criteria decision analysis in emergency management. Two DEA-based optimization models are constructed to facilitate identifying parameter information regarding criterion weights and quantifying qualitative criteria in TOPSIS. An emergency management case study utilizing data from the Emergency Management Australia (EMA) Disasters Database is provided to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed analysis procedure.