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Joint SAME and ASCE Conference Thursday March 27, 2003 An early start promised for a full day of education on perhaps the most current issue of today: Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection. I must admit that I had little expectations from the conference of its applicability to me, a civilian. However, a dozen other curious ASCE members, including city and county engineers and structural engineers, joined me at the Hope Hotel. We were in for a pleasant surprise. This is actually the first seminar in a two-part conference proposed by the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME), Kittyhawk post. The next seminar installment will be in the fall. This first seminar focused mostly on introducing the topic to those of us who were unfamiliar with it and relaying some technical information. The second will be more case studies and real-life examples. A few definitions are helpful in understanding the full intent of the seminar. Anti-terrorism is guarding against terrorist attacks. Force protection is a security program to minimize loss of life and critical assets. Vulnerability assessment (VA) identifies weaknesses and recommends mitigation, as in "Detect, Delay, and Respond" (DDR). Threat assessment defines standards upon which protective systems are based; it identifies aggressors and their tools, weapons and tactics. The first sessions gave an overview of the vulnerability assessment (VA) process from the Air Force, Navy and Army points of view. The mission of the VA team is twofold: to assess installations/sites and to provide technical support. The ultimate goal, of course is to save lives and protect critical assets. First, threat assessments and vulnerability assessments are conducted to result in a full risk assessment for a site. From that a strategy for mitigation or protection is implemented. If an attack occurs, a crisis-action team conducts incident response and consequence management. The Navy of course is mostly concerned about the US Ports. The initial thought years ago was that naval bases supplied for the war that occurred elsewhere in the world; they never thought they would be targeted. However, with recent terrorist attacks, they changed not only the way they secure naval bases but also the rules of engagement and training procedures. AT/FP measures need to begin on the local level to be effective. Partnering with technological firms is proving to be of great help. The Army has a Protective Design Center working on blast technologies and an Electronic Security Center refining intrusion detection and access control. The luncheon speaker gave an extremely detailed experience of the Pentagon attack on September 11. Because of the newly formed Building Operations Command Center (BOCC), the building manager was able to isolate the wedges of the Pentagon that were hit and keep the rest of the building damage-free. A good article to read on this is at http://renovation.pentagon.mil/BOMA_lowres.pdf. If you are looking for more good references on the Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection topic and DoD directives and construction standards, SAME has created a very helpful page on their website: http://www.interaxs.net/pub/kittyhawk/FP_References.htm. Additionally, if you go to the Agenda for the seminar, SAME has posted the Power Point Presentations of several of the speakers (http://www.interaxs.net/pub/kittyhawk/FP_Agenda.htm). SAME did an excellent job hosting this seminar, and was gracious enough to let ASCE attend as part of our annual seminar. Look for part two of this conference in the fall: you won't want to miss it. |
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