Risk-Informed Benefit–Cost Analysis for Homeland Security R&D: Methodology and an Application to Evaluating the Advanced Personal Protection System for Wildland Firefighters

This article describes a methodology for a risk-informed benefit–cost analysis that includes (i) risk analysis to quantify risk reduction benefits and (ii) uncertainty analyses to quantify probability distributions over costs and benefits. It also summarizes the lessons from 25 applications of this methodology to evaluate R&D projects of the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security. The article then illustrates the methodology with a specific application to evaluate the benefits and costs of the Advanced Personal Protection System (APPS), a new garment system developed to protect wildland firefighters. The goals of the APPS project were to reduce risk and to improve comfort. The cost analysis revealed that the APPS garments are more expensive by about 43.7 million in 2019 dollars. This large range was primarily due to the uncertainty about the reduction of fatality and injury risks and the market penetration rates of the new garments.