Adam WILLIAMS

Adam D. WILLIAMS

Academic Background:

• 2012 - present • MIT, ESD: PhD Candidate in Engineering Systems
• 2007 • Texas A&M University, George Bush School of Government and Public Service: Master of International Affairs
• 2004 • Texas A&M University, Dwight Look College of Engineering: BS in Mechanical Engineering

Work Experience:

• 2011 - Present • Sandia National Laboratories • Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
  Senior R&D Systems Engineer, International Security Engineering Department:
  • Sandia project lead for NA-24's Gulf Nuclear Energy Infrastructure Institute (GNEII)
  • Physical protection lead (and Sandia project lead) for NA-25's cooperation on the China Center of Excellence for Nuclear Security and Nonproliferation
  • Research member for Sandia project on systems dynamics, resilience, and complex, adaptive, system of systems (CASoS) modeling of nonproliferation
  • Policy analysis for Sandia's global security engagement, nuclear nonproliferation and international security projects.
• 2008 - 2011• Sandia National Laboratories • Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
  Member of the Technical Staff, International Security Technical Systems Analyst
  • Vulnerability assessment and physical protection system design and analysis for NNSA/NA-25 and NA-21 international programs
  • Project manager for NA-24's Gulf Nuclear Energy Infrastructure Institute (GNEII)
  • Policy analysis for Sandia's global security engagement, nuclear nonproliferation and international security projects.
• 2007 - 2008 • Nuclear Security Science & Policy Institute • College Station, TX, USA
  Temporary Research Assistant
  • Provided foundation research for the systems and risk analysis team of the Smuggled HEU Interdicting through Enhanced anaLysis and Dectectors (SHIELD) project ()
  • Expanded the usability of NSSPI-07-051: Network Analysis of Nuclear Terrorism Pathways ().
• 2007 - 2008 • Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs • College Station, TX, USA
  Temporary Research Associate
  • Research, fact-checking and writing for (and acknowledged in) Absher, M.K., M.C. Desch, and R. Popadiuk.  (2012) Privileged and Confidential: The Secret History of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.  The University of Kentucky Press.

Research Domain:

NUCLEAR SECURITY: Viewing nuclear security as a complex, socio-technical system provides a useful mental map for visualizing how the interconnections of and interactions between physical protection system technologies (cameras, sensors, barriers e.g.) and organizational processes (operations and ‘security culture,’ e.g.) affect facility performance.  Nuclear security is not a well-defined term, ranging in meaning from facility-level design concerns to a topic of national policy to the center of (desired) international cooperation.  Gaps of knowledge in the domain include understanding the interactions and feedbacks between the technical and social components of security systems (at the facility level) and provided a useful, common framework on which to base national policy and international cooperation.
 
Starting from current, well-established International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) guidelines for security and current Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) protocols, case studies of known attacks on nuclear facilities will be analyzed as empirical evidence for developing this new systems-based theory of nuclear security.  The core development of ‘system security’ will be aided by aggregating data from case studies of high value, industrial thefts (i.e., high value diamond or bank vault thefts).  The developed model for 'system security' will then be compared against traditional methods of security system analysis for a hypothetical facility used by the IAEA or representative data from real facilities.

Research Methodology:

Systems theory provides the concepts and tools necessary for understanding the characteristics of and interactions between individual components of complex, socio-technical systems.  A better understanding of overarching system structures, the internal component dynamics, and the relationship between the two is necessary to better design and analyze socio-technical systems.  Similarly, the System-Theoretic Accident Model and Process (STAMP) causality model draws on concepts from engineering, mathematics, cognitive and social psychology, organizational theory, political science and economics to model these structures, dynamics, and relationships.  Similarly, system dynamics provides a mathematical tool for understanding the temporal changes to the structural complexity, structural dynamics, and behavioral feedbacks of a socio-technical system.  It also provides a good way to model the dynamics processes behind changes in static system control structures.

Research Description:

Though security-related technologies continue to advance, decreasing operating budgets and lack of connection to ‘return on investment’ are stressing traditional models of security design and analysis.  Despite gleaning some aspects of the successful reinvention of nuclear safety after the Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986) accidents, nuclear security is still lacking.  Today’s approaches to nuclear security mirror traditional models of accident causality (probabilistic risk assessment, event trees, fault trees, etc.) that assume component failure as the source of the loss event and that increased component reliability will prevent accidents (incidents).  Such a reductionist analytical paradigm is untenable for the systems of today, where interactions between technical and social (i.e., organizational) system components can exponentially increase complexity.  In response, the ‘System-Theoretic Accident Model and Process (STAMP)’ provides a new methodological approach of causation for analyzing (and designing against) safety accidents, especially those involving complex, socio-technical systems. 

In much the same way, ‘the fast pace of technological change,’ ‘reduced ability to learn from experience,’ ‘changing nature of [security] incidents and [adversaries],’ ‘new types of hazards,’ and ‘increasing complexity and coupling’ challenge traditional approaches to security design, analysis and implementation for nuclear facilities in current dynamics environments.  Employing the underlying causality model (i.e., actions that move the system toward a vulnerable state); emphasizing the systems understanding of the state of the system (i.e., eliminating, minimizing or mitigating vulnerable states of the system); and implementing the analytical paradigm shift (i.e., from preventing failures to enforcing security constraints) of STAMP provides a mechanism for understanding the endogenous nature of security.  What emerges is a complex, socio-technical system property – ‘system security’ – manifested in the nuclear realm at the intersection of security technology; nuclear material accounting and control; organizational management and culture; and national and international collaboration politics.