Journal de bioterrorisme et de biodéfense

Abstrait

The Role of Protection Measures and their Interaction in Determining Building Vulnerability and Resilience to Bioterrorism

Lai KM

Understanding the risk presented to buildings by bioterrorism has been a topic of research interest in recent years. Risk assessment methodologies and guidelines for the protection of buildings have been developed by a number of researchers, but it remains difficult to quantify the vulnerability and resilience of a building. It is an important issue from both biosecurity investment and operation point of view because different measures have different cost and operation implications. This paper reviews existing risk assessment methodologies, introduces a novel framework for classifying protection measures, and determines the inter-relation of the framework components and building vulnerability and resilience using a fault tree analysis within a biosecurity network system. Future work will develop weighting values for the different protection measures within the framework, allowing for the calculation of bioterrorism resilience of existing buildings, and to provide a decision making guide for building architects, builders, and managers for new and retrofitted buildings