In this module, you are to select a topic for your research paper. You will be conducting ongoing research on this topic for the rest of the term, so please choose wisely. Your topic should be based upon any one or two of the 16 areas of critical infrastructure protection that are described in the course (e.g., Chemicals, Energy, Food & Agriculture, Financial Services etc.), and visible here at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Critical Infrastructure Sectors webpage. (Links to an external site.) You should also probe around these sectors, reviewing their Sector Specific plans for protection and assured reliability, at a minimum; these are available here: NIPP Critical Infrastructure Sector-Specific Plans. (Links to an external site.)
Your topic proposal assignment due here in Module 2 should include the following:
1. Thesis/problem statement.
2. Significance of the topic to critical infrastructure protection.
3. Why there is a need for research on this topic (background of the issue).
4. 3-5 initial sources you have researched, and how they inform your topic.
Your proposal should be roughly 2-3 pages (no more than 750 words of double-spaced and 12 point font text, and include proper in-text citations and a final reference page in the APA format (7th edition). Your instructor will provide you feedback to help focus your project. Please review the rubric below to ensure you have included the proper requirements for this assignment.
While there is no set design for this research paper assignment, some of these suggestions below should help you in working with your instructor to design a worthwhile project. With each of these, you should feel free to use these question guides as needed to establish as narrow and focused a research project as is possible:
· Why are you interested in these sectors?
· What makes these sectors critical?
· What have been the history and current challenges in these sectors (e.g., in terms of protection or assurance/reliability; federal-local or public-private governance and relations such as in partnerships (Links to an external site.))?
· If choosing two sectors, compare and contrast them on how they function, how their plans work, how Private-Public partnerships work, how resilient they are etc.?
· If choosing only one sector, explore how the approach of the US differs from other countries in this sector?
· What vulnerabilities does each sector have, and do you find commonalities in these (e.g., vis-à-vis cyber threats), or differences that you see in them?
· What are the likeliest futures of the sectors you are reviewing, and how would you improve their protection or reliability/assurance (e.g., what do you see that could be done differently in them, better perhaps on some dimension of critical infrastructure functioning)?
To assist you in your research, you should review pages 6-7 for resources and journals of use to your research, and draw on works from journals and sites such as these:
https://cip.gmu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Foundations-of-CISR_-Modules-Core-Syllabus_-August-2015.pdf (Links to an external site.)
U.S. Homeland Security Digital Library (Links to an external site.)
The International Journal of Critical Infrastructures (Links to an external site.)
Homeland Security Affairs (Links to an external site.)
The Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (Links to an external site.)
International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection (Links to an external site.)
You must submit your paper topic for approval to your instructor by the end of Module 2.
In Module 5, you will submit an annotated bibliography of scholarly sources you will be using to write your paper. In Module 7, you submit your final research paper, which will be primarily based on the resources from your annotated bibliography.
Your final essay will be evaluated in terms of how thoroughly you: answer some of the questions above (working in conjunction with your instructor); use resources to document your main points; and properly cite referenced work. Your essay should address some of the questions above and should consist of at least 2,500 words of text (at least 10 pages of double-spaced and 12 point font of text). Use in-text citations and a reference list that will make up an additional page.
To successfully complete the final research paper, you will need to organize your responses to the questions and those posed by your instructor, and then craft a formatted essay that includes each of the following:
· A title page;
· Well-developed introductory paragraph explaining the purpose of the essay and briefly referencing some of the main points/contentions offered in the essay;
· The body of the essay should consist of your effort to best answer the primary questions from the assignment prompt and your interaction with your instructor. It should consist of at least 2,500 words of text (at least 10 pages of double-spaced and 12 point font of text). Though the method by which this is done is largely up to you, it is essential that the responses to the questions in the prompt and your instructor be based upon scholarly readings and should remain at all times defensible (in an academic sense). You have a great deal of information to draw from in creating your essay, including the assigned readings and hyperlinked sources in the module notes. As is the case with every assignment in HEM460, presenting any unsubstantiated, illogical, or indefensible position will have an adverse effect on the final grade. Please direct any questions regarding these expectations to the instructor;
· A concise concluding paragraph that briefly restates both the purpose of the essay as well as some of the primary argument offered by you, the essay’s author. Be sure the concluding paragraph does not introduce new information;
· A list of all sources consulted the preparation of the essay. The essay should be formatted according to APA-style documentation. (Links to an external site.) This includes the format of the list of references.
Evaluation
This assignment will be graded using the SPS Default Topic Proposal Rubric, displayed below. Please review this rubric prior to beginning your work. You can also access the rubric on the Course Rubrics page within the Start Here module. This assignment is worth 5% of your final course grade.
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