Protecting against terrorist attacks for urban transportation projects

Arup has undertaken security risk assessments for designs and analyses of major infrastructure projects. As part of engineering team efforts, Arup Risk Consulting performs risk assessments and supports decision analyses for threats of explosives and chemical, biological or radiological agents for buildings, urban transit centres, bridges, public bus systems and airport facilities. The work is timely because of attacks in recent years on buildings in New York City and Istanbul, and on transportation systems in Madrid and Tokyo. This paper will describe the challenges of protecting public infrastructure against terrorist attacks, and the approach taken by Arup for performing threat and risk assessments and interacting with clients and team members. The assessments lead to risk rankings and to the creation of lists of cost-effective mitigation measures recommended to the design team and client. These measures can have minimal impact on design principles and budget if the studies are performed early. The efforts can be most successful if they engage the team of designers, and if the client makes security a priority for the overall effort.