Nonprofit research institution founded by 40-year public safety practitioner addresses structural gap affecting 600 million people on islands worldwide — communities currently served by public safety frameworks designed for continents, not islands.
The Island Security Policy Institute (ISPI) has been established in Honolulu, Hawaii as the world's first and only nonprofit think tank dedicated exclusively to public safety and security policy for island and coastal communities worldwide. ISPI is indexed in the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) and registered in the U.S. System for Award Management (SAM.gov UEI: G5H9VJ7C4NS8).
ISPI was founded by Warren Pulley, a 40-year public safety practitioner whose operational background spans U.S. Air Force nuclear security, twelve years at the Los Angeles Police Department in metropolitan law enforcement and vice crimes investigation, six years as a Diplomatic Protective Specialist at the U.S. Embassy Baghdad — producing 2,400 documented behavioral threat assessments with zero incidents at the principal level — FEMA-certified emergency management, Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management (BTAM) certification through the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (ATAP), and university campus safety leadership in Hawaii including Clery Act compliance and Title IX coordination.
ISPI's founding thesis — established in its flagship research document, ISPI-WP01 — is that the structural differences between island and continental geography are sufficiently fundamental that adaptation of continental frameworks is insufficient. Island communities face five structural conditions that continental public safety frameworks do not address: geographic isolation that eliminates mutual aid within operationally relevant timeframes, supply chain singularity where one port or one airport represents the entire resupply pathway, workforce irreplaceability where island labor markets cannot backfill critical positions from adjacent markets, social density that creates reporting barriers for insider threat and behavioral assessment programs, and law enforcement response time conditions where the nearest backup may be 30 to 60 minutes away rather than the seven minutes that active threat response protocols assume.
In its founding year, ISPI has published 22 research documents — white papers, policy briefs, assessment reports, and research books — across four research categories and 21 specific research topics. The full research library is available free to the public at ispiglobal.com/research and requires no registration to access. ISPI's research is produced under the ISPI Research Methodology Guide v4.0, a five-pillar framework requiring that every research product draw from government agency sources, regional organization data, OSINT tools with Bellingcat two-source verification, the ISPI Global Expert Panel of 68 researchers across 14 disciplines, and AI research synthesis under practitioner review.
ISPI's research is indexed in the National Criminal Justice Reference Service alongside the research output of leading policy research institutions worldwide. All ISPI research is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, permitting reproduction and adaptation with attribution.
In its founding year, ISPI has engaged the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HIEMA) with a research scope and budget outline examining emergency management framework reform following the August 2023 Lahaina wildfire, which killed 100 people and caused $5.5 billion in damages. ISPI's research on the Lahaina wildfire — ISPI-HI-04 — documents five structural framework failures in the emergency response and proposes an island-specific alternative framework.
ISPI has also engaged the Office of Councilmember Andria Tupola (Honolulu City Council, District 1) and Communications Director Kaiwi Coakley with independent research on HPD's 448 sworn officer vacancies as of February 2, 2026 — documenting the real compensation gap driven by Hawaii's $1.1 million median home price as the primary driver of lateral transfers to mainland departments. ISPI's policy brief on this finding has been presented to the incoming Honolulu Police Chief.
ISPI's research methodology requires that every research product include a SIDS global bridge — connecting Hawaii and Pacific findings to the 39 Small Island Developing States recognized by the United Nations under the Samoa Pathway (2014) and the current BPOA+30 review. The 39 SIDS, covering Pacific Ocean, Caribbean Sea, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Mediterranean island nations, represent approximately 65 million people facing the same structural public safety conditions that ISPI's research addresses in the Hawaii and Pacific context.
The Pacific Islands Forum's invocation of the Biketawa Declaration on May 11, 2026 — to coordinate a regional response to the energy crisis linked to Middle East conflict disrupting Pacific supply chains — validated ISPI's supply chain singularity thesis in real time. The Forum activated its highest crisis mechanism for only the third time in history, for a supply chain disruption affecting 18 Pacific nations simultaneously — the structural condition ISPI documented before the crisis materialized.
"Every policy recommendation we publish has been stress-tested against real operational conditions across six security disciplines — not theoretical scenarios. Island communities have been underserved by research institutions for too long. ISPI was built to close that gap. The frameworks that protect 600 million people on islands worldwide must be built from island structural realities — not adapted from environments that share none of those realities. That is the research ISPI is producing. And all of it is free."
The Island Security Policy Institute (ISPI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization based in Honolulu, Hawaii. ISPI produces practitioner-led research, policy analysis, and training programs on public safety, emergency preparedness, and security policy for island and coastal communities worldwide. ISPI's research draws on verified operational experience across military service, law enforcement, diplomatic security, emergency management, and campus safety administration. All ISPI research is available free to the public at ispiglobal.com. ISPI is a 501(c)(3) organization registered in SAM.gov under UEI G5H9VJ7C4NS8, NAICS 541720.